America's Secret War Against the Bolsheviks

When Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik government pulled Russia out of the First World War, it sent shockwaves through the Allied powers. Russia had tied down millions of German and Austro-Hungarian troops on the Eastern Front for years. With that front suddenly gone, Allied leaders feared Germany could shift enough forces west to break the deadlock in France before American manpower arrived in force. The danger was real, but it was also more complicated than many expected. Germany gained enormous territory through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, yet occupying Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic states still consumed hundreds of thousands of troops that could not simply be transferred to the Western Front. Even so, Britain's, France's, and Japan's, and America's governments viewed Russia's collapse as a strategic crisis with consequences far beyond the Eastern Front. The war against Germany would soon end, but the struggle inside Russia was only beginning. As the country descended into civil war between the Bolsheviks and their enemies, the victorious Allied powers faced a question few people remember today. Should they, the Allies, intervene in Russia's future, even if it meant sending their own soldiers into the middle of another nation's civil war? What was the international intervention? Who was involved? Why were they involved? What was the outcome? Hello, I'm Colin Heaton, former history professor, Army and Marine Corps veteran, and welcome to this episode of Forgotten History. In January 1919, Winston Churchill, the former first Lord of the Admiralty, became Secretary of State for War and Air, placing him in charge of the British Army and Royal Air Force, just as Britain was trying to demobilize after World War I. From that position, he became one of the strongest advocates for anti-Bolshevik policy. Germany had just suppressed a communist-inspired uprising, and the prospect of similar revolutions spreading across Europe was a genuine concern. Churchill wanted Britain to support the anti-communist White Russian armies, led by figures such as Admiral Alexander Kolchak in Siberia, General Anton Denikin in southern Russia, and General Nikolai Yudinich on the Petrograd Front near the Baltic, rather than launching another large-scale British invasion. He favored providing arms, supplies, advisors, funding, tanks, aircraft, and military missions to help the White forces defeat the Bolsheviks. Churchill viewed Bolshevism as far more than a Russian domestic issue. He believed it was a revolutionary movement that threatened to spread across Europe, Asia, the British Empire, and even Britain's own Labour government. He was far from alone in that assessment. Leaders throughout the Allied powers shared the same concern. The official reasons for Allied intervention were practical, at least at first. The Allies hoped to keep Russia in World War I or reopen the Eastern Front against Germany after the Bolsheviks seized power. They also wanted to protect large stockpiles of war materiel at ports, such as Archangel Murmansk and Vladivostok, assist the Czechoslovak Legion, a large anti-German force stranded along the Trans-Siberian Railway, and prevent Germany from exploiting Russia's collapse after the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. As the situation evolved, another objective emerged, supporting anti-Bolshevik White forces fighting Lenin's Red government. After Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire agreed to the armistice ending World War I, another major concern became the repatriation of prisoners of war still held in the former Russian Empire. Central powers' prisoners held in Britain, France, and Italy were being returned home, while Allied prisoners held by Germany and Austria-Hungary, primarily French, Italian, and British soldiers, were also being released. The same could not be said for prisoners held by the Bolsheviks. Records indicate that Russia held more than two million prisoners of war, roughly 90% of whom were from Austria-Hungary, although some estimates place the total between 1.6 and 2 million. After the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Bolsheviks largely stopped communicating about repatriation while continuing to demand the return of former Russian prisoners, a process that was already underway. Churchill, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, French President Raymond Poincaré, and President Woodrow Wilson all expected the Bolshevik government to honor its obligations under the Hague Conventions regarding the return of prisoners following the end of hostilities. Lenin and his senior leadership had other priorities. Many of the prisoners were skilled workers, engineers, technicians, and educated professionals who could be put to work helping rebuild and industrialize the new Soviet state. At the same time, the Bolsheviks expanded the labor camp system they inherited from the Russian Empire. What had once been a network used by the Tsarist government to imprison political opponents and other offenders grew rapidly as the new regime sought a vast supply of forced labor. The Bolshevik military leadership became increasingly capable after new commanders were appointed, particularly once Leon Trotsky rebuilt the Red Army following the collapse of the Tsarist regime. Rather than relying solely on political loyalty, Trotsky generally selected commanders based on military competence while Joseph Stalin favored men he considered more politically reliable. During the Civil War, Lenin usually deferred to Trotsky on military appointments and those decisions proved critical to the Red Army's success. General Sergei Kamenev, a former Tsarist officer who joined the Bolsheviks, served as commander on the Eastern Front from September 1918 to July 1919 and directed the successful counter-offensive against Admiral Alexander Kolchak. Yukums Vasietis, a Latvian officer, became the Red Army's first commander-in-chief and led its forces through the dangerous opening stages of the Civil War before being replaced by Kamenev. Among the Red Army's most gifted field commanders was Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who fought against Kolchak on the Eastern Front before later commanding Soviet forces during the Polish-Soviet War. His operational skill earned him the nickname the Red Napoleon. Mikhail Frunze also distinguished himself in the Eastern and Southern campaigns, helping defeat Kolchak before later crushing the forces of General Pyotr Wrangel, the last major white commander in Crimea. Semyon Budyany, already renowned as a cavalry leader, commanded the First Cavalry Army against General Anton Denikin and later fought in the Polish-Soviet War. Other capable commanders strengthened the Red Army across multiple theaters. Klement Voroshilov directed the defense of Tsaritsyn while Alexander Yegorov fought Denikin in the South before commanding the Southwestern Front during the Polish-Soviet War. Vasily Bluiker commanded forces in the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East, where he played a key role in defeating the remaining white armies. Ironim Ubarovich served on several fronts, A. A. Samoylo directed operations against white forces in the North and West, and Grigory Sokolnov held both military and political leadership roles in Turkestan. The Bolsheviks also relied heavily on political commissars to maintain discipline and coordinate military policy. Sergei Gusev and Ivar Smilga, both members of the Revolutionary Military Council, exerted considerable influence over operations, particularly on the Eastern Front. Together, this leadership gave the Red Army an effective balance of strategic direction and battlefield command. Trotsky provided the organizational drive, Kamenev coordinated the overall military effort, and commanders such as Frenzy, Tukhachevsky, Budyany, and Yegorov carried the fighting to the white armies. The areas of operations stretched across Northern Russia around Archangel and Murmansk, Siberia, Southern Russia, the Baltic and Petrograd Front, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. On the Petrograd Front, the Red Army defended the city against General Nikolai Yudinich, with Leon Trotsky personally helping organize its defense. Winston Churchill is often associated with the phrase, strangle Bolshevism in its cradle. Even before World War I had ended, Churchill understood the challenge the Bolsheviks posed. At the same time, he recognized that Britain had very little appetite for another major war. Early in the intervention, Churchill's influence was limited because he was serving as Minister of Munitions rather than Secretary of State for War. Even so, he worked to persuade other Allied leaders that the Bolsheviks represented a long-term threat that could not simply be ignored. The Churchill Project notes that Churchill had become the British statesman most closely associated with support for the white Russians, while also emphasizing that he operated within a fragile Allied consensus and against steadily declining public support for intervention. Europe was exhausted by four years of war, leaving little political will for another large-scale military commitment. Churchill ultimately secured continued Allied involvement, but only on a limited scale. The Allied landings in North Russia and Siberia were initially justified by wartime objectives, protecting Allied stockpiles, reopening pressure on Germany, and assisting the Czechoslovak Legion. Churchill, however, saw a broader opportunity. If the white armies could survive long enough, they might overthrow Lenin and the Bolsheviks before their government became firmly established. His goal was to maintain pressure on the Bolsheviks by using the Allied forces already in Russia as leverage, preventing a Bolshevik victory if possible, and delaying the complete withdrawal of foreign troops until the white armies had a realistic change of success. Although Churchill publicly argued for stronger action, the policy he ultimately pursued, both out of political necessity and practical reality, centered on providing arms, supplies, advisors, aircraft, tanks, and financial assistance, rather than committing hundreds of thousands of British or Allied troops to another full-scale war. But not everyone agreed. Prime Minister David Lloyd George grew increasingly skeptical of deeper involvement, and President Woodrow Wilson also opposed expanding the intervention. Wilson argued that Allied soldiers in Russia no longer understood for whom or for what they were fighting, and favored bringing them home. Churchill nevertheless prolonged British support for the white armies throughout much of 1919. He continued to back Kolchak and Denikin and resisted calls for a rapid withdrawal. One account of British policy in Siberia even notes that Churchill delayed repatriating British battalions because he believed Kolchak still had a chance to defeat the Bolsheviks. In the end, however, Churchill could not overcome three fundamental problems. The white movement remained deeply divided, plagued by corruption, and often alienated the civilian population through its own brutality. The British public and military had little desire to continue fighting after the Great War. Finally, the Allied powers never developed a unified strategy for intervention, leaving each nation to pursue its own limited objectives. The Allies landed at Murmansk and Archangel in 1918. British forces led much of this intervention, joined by American, Canadian, French, Serbian, Polish, and other Allied troops. The stated objectives were to protect Allied war supplies, prevent them from falling into German hands, and maintain a foothold in northern Russia. As the Russian Civil War intensified, however, the mission gradually evolved into direct combat against Bolshevik forces. According to the U.S. Army Center of Military History, the Allied Supreme War Council intended to establish secure northern bridgeheads into Russia. British Major General Frederick Poole soon expanded those operations, pushing Allied forces hundreds of miles south of Archangel. This went well beyond President Woodrow Wilson's original expectation that the American contingent would primarily guard the port and avoid offensive operations against the Bolsheviks. American naval forces in north Russia operated in support roles under overall British command. The U.S. Navy's historical account notes that Major General Frederick C. Poole served as Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces in north Russia during the early stages of the campaign. The operation became known as the Polar Bear Expedition and was later commanded by British Major General Edmund Ironside. American ground forces were eventually placed under Brigadier General Wilds P. Richardson, who assumed command of all U.S. forces in north Russia on April 9, 1919. Richardson oversaw the consolidation and the eventual withdrawal of the American contingent from Archangel. In the Murmansk region, British operations were commanded by Major General Sir Charles Maynard, whose dispatches documented both the initial British landing in June 1918 and the subsequent operations conducted there throughout 1919. The final phase of the campaign fell to General Lord Henry Rawlinson, who commanded the north Russia relief force responsible for covering the orderly evacuation of Allied troops in 1919. His mission was not to expand the intervention, but to extract Allied forces while preventing the withdrawal from turning into a rout. At the same time, the Royal Navy opened another front in the Baltic. Under Rear Admiral Sir Edwin Alexander Sinclair and later Rear Admiral Sir Walter Cowan, the British Baltic squadron operated against the Bolshevik naval forces while supporting the newly independent Baltic stakes. Cowan in particular became the best-known British naval commander of the Baltic intervention, playing a significant role in preventing Bolshevik domination of the region. North Russia's naval operations were commanded by a succession of Royal Navy officers, including Rear Admirals Thomas W. Kemp and John Green, along with Commodore Richard Hyde. Together, they directed Allied naval operations in the Murmansk, White Sea, and Archangel regions, providing logistical support, escorting convoys, and supporting ground operations. The American contingent in North Russia was what became known as the Polar Bear Expedition. The soldiers fought through brutal winters, swamps, dense forests, and isolated villages along rivers and rail lines. After the armistice of November 1918 ended the fighting in Western Europe, morale deteriorated rapidly. Many of the men had enlisted to fight Germany only to find themselves continuing to fight Russians, months after Germany and Austria-Hungary had surrendered. The U.S. Army's official history notes that Allied combat operations around Archangel and Vladivostok continued well into 1920. Colonel George E. Stewart commanded the initial American force that landed at Archangel in 1918, including elements of the 339th Infantry Regiment and the 310th Engineers. In Siberia, Major General William S. Graves commanded the American Expeditionary Force from 1918 to 1920. His authority, however, extended only to American troops. He did not command the Japanese, British, French, Czechoslovak, or White Russian forces operating in the region. In fact, Graves was deliberately given limited orders. His mission was to protect Allied supplies, help secure the Trans-Siberian Railway, and assist the Czechoslovak Legion while avoiding entanglement in Russia's civil war or becoming the military arm of anti-Bolshevik warlords. It was a difficult balancing act that often placed him at odds with other Allied commanders who favored more aggressive support for the White armies. British operations in Siberia centered on Omsk, where Major General Sir Alfred Knox served as head of the British military mission attached to Admiral Alexander Kolchak's government. Lieutenant Colonel John Ward commanded the British infantry contingent, including the 25th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment, better known as the Diehards. In southern Russia, Major General Herbert C. Holman led the British military mission attached to General Anton Denikin's White Army. Overall British operations in the Black Sea region fell under General Sir George Milne, whose responsibilities included the Ukrainian coast and Crimea. During the evacuation from Novorossiysk in 1920, Holman operated directly under Milne's command. Official American records illustrate just how broad the intervention had become. State Department documents show Allied discussions encompassing Siberia, Manchuria, Vladivostok, Archangel, the Czechoslovak Legion, and support for various anti-Bolshevik governments. The National Archives records that President Wilson authorized approximately 8,000 American troops for Siberia while another expeditionary force deployed to North Russia. U.S. Navy records further note that roughly 7,000 American troops landed at Vladivostok in August 1918, with additional forces arriving later. American troops remained in Siberia until January 1920 as part of the larger Allied intervention. The French contribution was significant, such as General Maurice Janin, who became commander of the Czechoslovak Legion and other Allied forces in Siberia from 1918 to 1920. General Philippe d'Ansan was commanding the French-led Allied expeditionary in southern Russia and Ukraine, especially around Odessa, in late 1918 to early 1919. Admiral Jean-Francois Charles Amet was appointed as overall senior French naval commander of the Black Sea-Odessa region during the Odessa intervention. His ships and sailors were central to the French presence there, and French naval unrest helped end the intervention. But few people know that the Japanese were very much involved as well. Japan was the elephant in the room. Tokyo sent a much larger force than the Americans wanted and appeared interested in influence over eastern Siberia, not just rescuing Czechs or guarding supplies. The National Archives summarizes the Siberian mission as a three-way contest involving Bolshevik guerrillas, Cossacks, Japanese troops, and American attempts to avoid being dragged fully into white Russian politics. General Otani Kikuzo was the principal Japanese commander in Siberia and Vladivostok. He assumed command of Allied forces in the region in August 1918, though American General William Graves refused to place U.S. troops under Japanese operational control. Also in Siberia, General Yui Mitsui, the Japanese Army chief of staff, was involved in planning the Siberian expedition. The intervention was planned extensively under Yui after Japan decided to send troops. General Tachibana Koichiro later became the Japanese commander associated with the continuation of the Siberian occupation after the main Allied withdrawal. Japan remained in parts of Siberia longer than the other Allies due to their concerns regarding their claim to Sakhalin Island. He operated under General Ōi Shigemoto, who handled logistics. Allied support included arms advisers, naval assistance money, and limited troop deployments. The French had a particularly unhappy experience in Odessa and the Black Sea region. War weariness, mutinies, local hostility, and unclear political objectives made their position untenable. And they were not alone. The British were more active in supplying and advising white armies, but they, too, were unwilling to commit the huge force that would have been needed to defeat the Bolsheviks outright. Churchill, despite his wish to increase the British presence, knew that would be impossible in the current political climate. The Allies in the Baltic Sea, where British naval forces supported the independent struggles of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and opposed Bolshevik expansion westward, overlapped with support for white Russian forces under Nikolai Yudinich, who tried and failed to take Petrograd. The Allies, being unwilling to commit large numbers of fighting troops, as well as a stretched supply line, were unable to do much about it. But for the Allies as a whole, the policy was confusing. In 1918, the main concern was still Germany. After Germany's defeat, the intervention drifted into anti-Bolshevik support without a clear political instate. The U.S. State Department's account of the 1919 Bullitt mission says, Allied leaders at the Paris Peace Conference were trying to figure out how to deal with the Russian Civil War, and that Bullitt sought a settlement that would end the Civil War, lift the blockade, and let Allied troops withdraw. The Allied intervention in Bolshevik Russia was the messy, half-hearted, badly coordinated military involvement by Britain, France, the United States, Japan, Canada, and others in the Russian Civil War, roughly between 1918 and 1920, with some Japanese troops staying in Siberia until 1922. The intervention failed for several reasons. No unified Allied objective. Britain, France, the U.S., and Japan all wanted different things. There was war exhaustion. After 1918, Western public and soldiers had no appetite for another war. The whites were divided. Monarchists, liberals, nationalists, Cossacks, and regional commanders often hated each other almost as much as they hated the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks controlled the center, main cities, lines of communication. They held Moscow, Petrograd, major rail hubs, and interior lines. Foreign troops helped Bolshevik propaganda as well. Lenin could portray the Reds as defenders of Russia against foreign capitalist invaders. In addition, Japan's ambitions alarmed the U.S. and others. Allied unity in Siberia was paper thin. Basically, the Allies sent enough troops to irritate the Bolsheviks, but not enough to defeat them. Classic poke-the-bear, forget-the-spear policy was the result, and by 1919-1920, most Allied forces withdrew. The U.S. left North Russia in 1919 and Siberia in 1920. Britain and France scaled down their support as the white armies collapsed. Japan stayed longest in parts of Siberia and the Russian Far East. It failed because the Allies lacked commitment, unity, local legitimacy, and a realistic plan. The Allies walked into Russia with five different reasons, three different strategies, and no exit plan. History being history charged them full price. The Bolsheviks won the Civil War. The intervention became a major Soviet grievance and fed long-term distrust of the West. U.S. Army later described the intervention as deeply resented by the victorious Reds and a source of Soviet suspicion for years afterward. The cost in lives for the Allies was not as staggering as those lost in World War I, of course, but it was still too high for having no appreciable gains or success. The North Russia Archangel Polar Bear Expedition had 235 deaths, 30 initially missing in action with 22 still listed as MIA today. The Siberia Vladivostok Expedition had 189 deaths with none missing, with 424 total U.S. deaths and 22 still missing. The North Russia figures are the messy ones. The Army Historical Foundation cites the October 1919 War Department report for AEF North Russia as 109 killed, 305 wounded, 35 died of wounds, 81 died of disease or exposure, 30 missing in action, 19 accidental and other deaths, and 4 captured. That list includes men from the 339th Infantry and 310th Engineers, plus one identified as an unrecovered POW. That gives 244 listed dead and missing categories. But the commonly cited death total for North Russia is, for the Americans, 235 because missing and later recovered bodies were handled inconsistently in the records. There is an important caveat. The American Battle Monuments Commission's Meuse-Argonne Cemetery tablets for the missing include names from the North Russia Expedition, but ABMC's public cemetery page gives the total missing at that cemetery, not a separate Russia-only count. Other casualties included 4,112 Czechoslovak, 3,116 Japanese, 938 British, 398 Greek, and 25 Romanian casualties. When added to the U.S. numbers, that equals 9,013 dead. However, these numbers do not include French, Italian, Serbian, Polish, Canadian, Estonian, or other minor Allied local anti-Bolshevik losses unless they are already folded into another category. Other known reported missing and unrecovered categories include 173 Greeks, 151 Romanians, and Bessarabians. At least 9,000 Allied personnel died or were killed in the intervention, and at least several hundred were listed as missing or had no known grave. The threat of communism caused the major Allied powers to plan on preventing Lenin and the Reds from taking control of Russia, thus creating a new global threat. The action failed. The cost was high, and in the end, no one was blamed. It was just wiped away and became forgotten history. Thank you for watching this episode of Forgotten History. If you liked what you saw, please click like, share, and subscribe. And if you would like to assist with the ever-increasing cost of production, please consider becoming a channel member and joining our Patreon page.