by Ed Strosser
By October more Allied troops had rolled into Vladivostok and spread throughout Siberia. The total now included 9,000 Americans, 1,000 French, 1,600 British, 72,000 Japanese, and the implausible sight of 12,000 Polish soldiers — all invading Russia. The Japanese, perhaps anticipating their Pearl Harbor gambit, glibly told Graves that their troops were there simply to load steel and coal onto ships.
General Graves, his options hampered by his position as the head of an invasion force, continued his desperate battle to not wage a war, against mounting odds. The British and French wanted to exploit the Siberian front to oust the Bolsheviks and replace them with a government that would continue the fight against Germany, as implausible as it was. The Japanese troops continued to occupy land and not give it back.
As one confused U.S. soldier put it, “What in hell are we doing here? After a while, we figured we had come over there to keep the Japanese from taking over, the English came over to keep an eye on us, and the French to check on the English, and so on.”
Meanwhile the fighting in the western front took a dramatic turn during 1918. The German high command, General Erich Ludendorff, knew that the German army had only one more shot left to win the war in 1918. The Allied blockade had by 1918 taken its toll on the Germans, who were facing severe food shortages. Ludendorff shifted manpower from the Russian front to the west, but instead of sending all available divisions, he kept some back to keep an eye on the chaos in Russia, and his western armies gained approximately forty divisions. Ludendorff also planned to use new shock troop tactics that had been successful against the Russians. Ludendorff rushed to knock out the British by cutting them off from the French. The British would be forced to evacuate before the American reinforcements, which were arriving daily, could make their presence felt. But his first two massive German drives in northern France, in March and then in April, despite achieving impressive breakthroughs in places, soon bogged down due to a lack of reinforcements and matériel.
THE CZECH GOLD
One of the legends that came out of the Siberian affair was this: Of the eight train cars of the tsar’s gold nabbed by the Czech legion, only seven were bartered to the Soviets for the legion’s freedom (along with Kolchak) and free passage out of Russia. What happened to the other trainload of gold?
No one really knows, of course. The Soviets were not scrupulous record keepers, but it’s clear that the amount of gold bullion, inherited by the provisional government from the tsar and which then ended up in Bolshevik hands, was considerably less than the tsar had held. And the Czechs weren’t talking except to refute the story, in 1924, by saying that some of it had been stolen under the noses of the Russian guards. It is indisputable that after World War I the Czech Legion Bank was established in Prague. The bank building features relief scenes of the legion’s retreat through Russia. In a bit of possible payback, the bank was looted by the Soviets in 1945 when they took over the country after World War II.
Ludendorff’s third drive in the center of the line toward Paris in May was spectacularly successful at first, but once again the German troops ran ahead of their supplies. Their attacks were blunted at the tip with the help of fresh American troops thrown into melees at Belleau Wood and Château-Thierry. The Germans, at last poised for victory against the disintegrating French army, eagerly rushed their next assault without disguising their intentions particularly well. The still-formidable French artillery caught the German shock troops as they were forming up for their attack, and despite giving ground, prevented the Germans from breaking through.
That summer both armies were attacked by the Spanish influenza, killing thousands, but the hungry German army took the hit harder. Their morale started to crack, made worse by the growing presence of the corn-fed Americans. Ludendorff, still wishing to make one more diversionary thrust against the French before knocking out the British, cranked up his fifth assault on July 15. The French again learned of the hour of attack and scattered the Germans with a well-timed artillery barrage. The Germans, without tanks, were initially successful, but with American, Italian, and British support the French line held; a counterattack, with Americans and French colonial troops in the lead, hit the Germans in the flank. The Germans were forced to retreat, and the Allies, now building momentum, never slowed down.
Ludendorff, stressed by the failure of his last grand offensive, turned on the Kaiser in October 1918 and insisted that he negotiate peace, long after the Kaiser had come to the same conclusion. The Germans skillfully conducted a fighting retreat across their entire western front. Ludendorff quit at the end of October, and by the beginning of November the Kaiser had fled. The fledgling German republic, practically stillborn, signed the Armistice, ending the fighting on November 11, 1918.
A week after the end of the war-to-end-all-wars, things were starting to look up for the Allies in Siberia. On November 17, Admiral Kolchak took over the White Russian government in the landlocked Siberian city of Omsk and appointed himself Supreme Ruler of all the Russias. The Allies, casting about for a strongman to grab power from the Reds, took a liking to the Supreme Ruler and started feeding him supplies down the Trans-Siberian Railroad. While a ruthless reactionary, tsarishly untroubled about ordering the deaths of those who opposed him, the former head of the Russian Black Sea Fleet convinced the Allies he was an enlightened leader, and Wilson was ready to recognize him as the legitimate head of Russia. Despite losing the obvious rationale that had been conveniently provided by the war, the Allies remained stubbornly undeterred in their position — the noninvasion invasion must go on.
Graves pressed on, continuing his brilliant strategy of doing absolutely nothing amid the growing tumult of the Russian Civil War. The White armies, filled with Cossacks, made initial gains against the Bolsheviks. The Czech freelancers, unimpressed with Kolchak and realizing the writing was on the wall for anyone opposing the Bolsheviks, decided to finally take advantage of the fact that the war was over and just go home. Now they found themselves trapped in the growing chaos of the civil war.
In the spring of 1919, the Kolchak government gave its dubious stamp of approval to the Allies’s plan to run the decrepit Siberian railroads. Graves, happy to have his soldiers actually doing something that didn’t involve boozing and whoring in Vladivostok, moved his forces out of the city and took control of a section of the railroad in support of the Kolchak government. The American troops, however, quickly got into a confrontation with a local White Russian Cossack leader, Grigori Semenov, who was nominally part of Kolchak’s forces but was backed by the invasion-practicing Japanese. By this time, Graves had started to receive thousands of rifles meant for the Kolchak forces, but he refused to hand them over to Semenov because his wild Cossacks had been taking potshots at American troops (and anyone else who got in their way) whenever possible.
Semenov stopped a train of weapons bound for Kolchak in Omsk and demanded 15,000 rifles. After a two-day standoff, Semenov backed off and the train chugged on to Omsk. So, in this noninvasion invasion, designed to shorten a war that had already ended, the United States had confronted a friend of a friend that was backed by yet another friend, natch. This was just one of the many scenarios Graves faced in Siberia on which Wilson’s memo provided no guidance.
In July 1919 Graves was instructed by Washington to visit Kolchak in Omsk, as the American government and the Allies had the month earlier promised to provide his government with munitions and food. Graves arrived in Omsk after a long train ride through Siberia, past Lake Baikal, deep in the interior… in time for the collapse of Kolchak’s government. He came away unimpressed with the Land Admiral.
Kolchak, without support of the Czech legion and realizing that the bulk of his army was in fact an unruly gang of Cossacks, concluded that not all Russians felt he was Supreme Ruler material. In November he passed command of the Whites to the pesky Cossack Semenov. The dispirited Kolchak retreated east until captured by the opportunistic Czech
legion. Sensing his barter value, the Czechs, in return for their safe passage out of Russia, turned him and his captured gold over to the crafty Reds. General Graves, now firmly in command of the port, bars, and restaurants of Vladivostok harbor, watched over the departure of the Czech soldiers as they finally shipped out home, more than a year after the end of World War I. There were no more cover stories. It was time to go. The American transport ships soon followed, loaded down with their war booty of eighty Russian wives of servicemen. The official figures put the American losses at 137 killed in action, with an additional 216 deaths from other sources, such as accidents and diseases.
The grabby Japanese stayed, still hoping to add a nice chunk of Russian tundra to their growing empire, but they eventually bowed to Bolshevik pressure and left in 1922.
In his book General Graves summed up his role in this amazingly stupid conflict with typical understatement: “I was in command of the United States troops sent to Siberia and, I must admit, I do not know what the United States was trying to accomplish by military intervention.”
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER
One would expect that when two heavyweights such as the United States and Russia go at it, the world would indeed change. And perhaps that may be the most amazing aspect of this madcap affair. It changed absolutely nothing, except to give the world a few more Czech World War I veterans and provide the Bolsheviks propaganda they could use for the next eight decades: America was trying to invade us. No one in the United States remembers, but they do.
Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919, and his wife became de facto president until the end of his term. During her time in charge she hid the ailing president from the vice president and the cabinet. She invaded no countries. Wilson died in 1924.
General William Graves retired from the army in 1928 and wrote a book damning the whole experience.
The Bolsheviks held Kolchak in prison for a few weeks and, as expected, placed him up against a wall and shot him on February 7. The gold found its way to the Bolsheviks in Moscow. On the bright side, a statue of Land Admiral Kolchak now stands in Omsk.
Vladimir Lenin suffered a series of debilitating strokes, starting in 1922, and died two years later. Josef Stalin took control of the Soviet Union and invaded many countries.
The Soviet Union remained communist until 1991.
SEVEN.
HITLER’S BEER HALL PUTSCH: 1923
What makes a good putsch?
Unlike the revolution, its more belligerent cousin, few have possessed the delicate touch to successfully pull off this somewhat subtle affair. Adolf Hitler, as we now know, wasn’t known for his delicacy.
A successful putsch is a lighthearted event, the fiesta of government overthrows. The putschists are only “giving the people what they want,” which is, of course, a new government run by the putschists. A well-run putsch should seem to magically spring from the streets and encounter light or no resistance, spilling only a soupçon of blood. Nothing dims the gleeful prospects of a good putsch faster than unnecessary bloodshed.
If there ever was a country ready for a putsch, it was Germany in 1923. And Munich was the perfect spot. Munich beerhalls were tailor made for putsch gathering spots: large caverns with food and beer to ply hungry irregular troops, perfect for inflammatory speeches and weapons caches. The political and military leaders of Munich and the entire province of Bavaria all detested anything vaguely resembling democracy and hungered for the security of a dictatorship, although no one could quite agree on what flavor. As the topper, the entire leadership of the region supported the overthrow of, well, themselves. They just had not yet figured out all the details, such as who would lead the new government.
Hitler, his rabble-rousing political skills already in full flower, had by then assembled many of his all-star cast of supporting characters that later successfully waged the largest, most devastating war of all time. The crew was headlined by the jovial World War I fascist hero of the air, Hermann Goering, and backed by the incomparably Prussian General Erich Ludendorff, the former leader of the spectacularly unsuccessful but widely admired German war effort in World War I.
Hitler was ready. Munich was ready. The beer was cold. There were plenty of unemployed former soldiers milling about, eager to put their bitter aggression to good use. It seemed like a slam dunk. But it all ended less than a day later with blood in the streets and short jail terms.
How could it have possibly failed?
THE PLAYERS
Adolf Hitler — a decorated veteran of the German army in World War I, native-born Austrian, nonsmoker, vegan, budding visual artist, uneducated, skill-free weirdo with absolutely no scruples, who somehow came up with the idea that he should be running the world and then convinced a lot of other people this sounded like a really good idea.
Skinny — Joined the nascent Nazi party in 1919 and by an incessant haranguing of the populace took the little party into the big leagues.
Props — Made great use of his odd, blinkless stare by becoming a riveting speaker.
Pros — Knew how to sway a crowd.
Cons — Thought he should be running the world and continually threatened to kill himself if he wasn’t given the chance.
General Erich Ludendorff — Hitler’s ace-in-the-hole for the putsch. The bumbling Prussian who had blown the once-every-thousand-years opportunity to crush England and France in a one-front war after the Russians bowed out of World War I, had saved his reputation by inventing the “stabbed in the back by the lousy politicians on the home front” excuse, before fleeing to Sweden at the end of the war sporting a false beard.
Skinny — Ludendorff’s participation ensured that Hitler’s ragtag army of street thugs would get instant street cred and be taken seriously by the average right-wing sympathizing citizen of Munich.
Props — Took advantage of the fact that a uniform ablaze with medals and the too-small-for-his-head spiked helmet remained an oddly comforting image to most Germans.
Pros — Looked every inch what he was, a fantastically violent retired general turned naïve revolutionary.
Cons — Suited up for battle dressed in a tweed suit the first night of the putsch.
THE GENERAL SITUATION
In 1923 Germany was chaos. After losing World War I it suffered every kind of revolution possible — Communist, monarchist and right wing — pretty much everything except democratic. The widely despised legal government, the Weimar Republic, hung on for dear life amid the raging winds of revolution.
The German economy was also a complete disaster. A key reason was that the German government didn’t have the money to pay the high amount of reparations demanded by the French, who were feeling quite vindictive that their country had been invaded, fought over for four years, and had lost millions of their citizens and soldiers. Before the war Germany had been the growing power in Europe, with the largest population of the western countries and the most technically advanced industry. It just didn’t make sense to most Germans that they had lost the war, especially to the French, their sagging, democratic, arch-enemy whom Bismarck had so easily manhandled in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. But now, unemployment in Germany was high, and rampant inflation — at its worst in 1923 when prices doubled every two days — had eroded the currency to the point that a cup of coffee cost billions of marks. Wheelbarrows had replaced wallets.
The Prussian officer corps longed for the inherent stability of a country organized around the codes and traditions of the Prussian military killing machine that they all had come to know, love, and trust. It was an article of faith among the defeated and disgraced Prussian officers of noble birth, who had marched the country into war before inadvertently plunging it into the chaos of revolution, that their glorious army was the crucial backbone of the German nation. They believed it was their duty to make a last stand for unchallengeable, oligarchical rule — or their country might disappear under the converging waves of radical Communism, radical d
emocracy, or an evil and unimaginable combination of both.
The most vehement of these former soldiers were the “Freikorps,” groups of former soldiers secretly hired, armed, and silently sanctioned by the legitimate government into illegal paramilitary companies. The Freikorps were tacitly given a free hand in crushing the revolutionaries of the left in exchange for propping up the Social Democratic regime of President Friedrich Ebert, who had inherited the tottering German state after the abdication by the Kaiser.
But the Freikorps were uncontrollable by anyone, including the hard-bitten officers who commanded them. The troops were invariably front-line veterans who had survived years of the unimaginable horror of trench warfare, and could in fact no longer exist in a peaceful society. Many of the German masses agreed with the aim of the Freikorps, if not the jackbooted tactics they had perfected on the rest of Europe.
The revered loser of World War I, Field Marshal Ludendorff — he of the big lie that Germany had been “stabbed in the back by the November criminals” to save his skin — was turning out to be an impatient, naïve putschist. He had been one of the organizers of the Kapp Putsch in 1920, a failed attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic, and with its collapse was forced to once again flee Germany in disguise. Ludendorff ended up in Munich, where he installed himself in a suburban villa and began to interview candidates for the open position of German dictator.