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When the Russian Empire fell in the second decade of the 20th century, it brought a time of civil war and feuding warlords. Out of this conflict arose a man who startled even his blood-thirsty contemporaries with the extent of his violence – but then again, this man believed he was the reincarnation of Genghis Khan, one of history’s greatest conquerors, and that he was on a mission to recreate the Great Khan’s barbarian empire. The man was Baron Ungern-Sternberg, one of the strangest and cruellest military figures of the 20th century.
Roman Nikolaus Fyodorovich von Ungern-Sternberg came from a Russian family living in the Baltic state of Latvia, where his forefathers had fought as mercenaries, crusaders, and pirates, laying claim to have founded the city of Riga in the face of assaults from Poles, Germans, and Russians. He began his career conventionally enough as a naval cadet, no doubt thinking his family’s history indicated a destiny at sea, but he ran off as a teenager to fight in a war at the other end of the Russian Empire in Siberia. In 1908, he became an officer in a Cossack regiment and served in the desolate land of Central Asia, on the border between Mongolia and China.
As a young man barely in his 20s, Ungern-Sternberg’s hungry mind was filled with stories of Genghis Khan (c.1162-1227), the founder of the Mongol Empire, and this was translated into reality when he was himself put in charge of a troop of Mongol horsemen. He immediately found a kinship with them, admiring their innate martial skills and fearlessness in battle. He wanted to be like these silent, frightening warriors, and made a step towards this by adopting Buddhism.
A world on fire
In 1917, the Russian Empire was on its knees in its war against Germany, when a small group of Bolshevik revolutionaries led by Vladimir Lenin took advantage of the political turmoil to lead a coup d’état, taking control of government and setting about establishing a Communist regime. In the confusion that followed, the Russian Empire collapsed and all its realms were up for grabs.
Caucasian Cossacks, Ukrainians, the peoples of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland, all rose in revolt. Armies from Britain, France, and Japan grabbed parts of northern Russia and Siberia. Russian officers and soldiers loyal to Tsar Nicholas II and the old regime formed armies to oppose the Bolsheviks in all the main battle zones, and they became known as the Whites. The army of the Bolshevik revolutionaries was called the Red Army, and it was commanded by Leon Trotsky.
Ungern-Sternberg loathed the Bolsheviks. He pledged to restore the Tsar to his throne and then ‘wipe out the revolution-mongers among the white races’. His hatred of the Communists was no doubt intensified when he heard of their crushing blows against his own homeland of Latvia. Now in his early 30s, he was a formidable warrior in his own right. Fighting for four years in the war against the Germans, he displayed great courage and leadership, being rapidly promoted to the rank of Major-General and awarded the Cross of St George. His fellow officers had learned to respect and fear him. ‘Only his reckless courage prevented his being cashiered by various commanding officers under whom he had served,’ recorded a contemporary. ‘When Ungern-Sternberg entered a café, other occupants retired, for he was an expert with his gun. In his drinking bouts, he slew many of his own officers.’
In July 1918, the Tsar and his family were executed – and, by 1920, the great civil war between the White and Red Russians had ground to a halt with the crushing of the counter-revolutionaries by the Bolsheviks. Ungern-Sternberg found himself out on a limb in the middle of Siberia. With his beloved Tsar gone and the White Russian army disintegrating, he now sought his own barbarian destiny. The land of the Mongols that he so admired had been invaded by the Chinese, who had taken advantage of Russia’s misfortunes to increase their own empire. Believing himself by now to be the new Genghis Khan, Ungern-Sternberg was certain it was his duty to release the Mongols from their Chinese yoke. With an army of ex-White Army Russians and native warriors, he would rebuild the Empire of the Mongols, and then march against the revolutionaries in the West.
Dmitri Alioshin, a White Russian officer who threw his lot in with the Baron, described how Ungern-Sternberg recruited his new troops: ‘He would stop at each man separately, look straight into his face, hold that gaze for a few moments, and then bark: “To the army”, “back to the cattle”, or “liquidate”. All men with physical defects were shot until only the able-bodied remained.’
To fund this bandit army, Ungern-Sternberg needed more than just loot, and he found enthusiastic political backers in the Japanese. They had long harboured plans of extending their rule into Central Asia, and had fought the Russians previously to secure a toehold in Siberia. They looked with interest on this brutal but efficient warlord who promised to extend their influence into Mongolia. Money, weapons, and a handful of Japanese military advisers were delivered to the Baron, who now felt ready to take on the vast, but crumbling Chinese Empire.
Ungern-Sternberg’s army numbered approximately 6,000 warriors, 4,000 of these being ex-White Army Russians, the rest being Mongols and other Siberian horsemen. To this were added the Japanese advisers and some 70 armoured bodyguards donated by the Dalai Lama in Tibet, who had been promised an extension of his religious realm if the Baron was successful. Ungern-Sternberg had also fulfilled his self-image as a Mongol warlord by marrying a Mongolian princess, who travelled with the army in the company of the Baron’s Buddhist spiritual advisers.
Barbarian fantasy
With this bizarre entourage, Ungern-Sternberg advanced into Mongolia in October 1920. Dmitri Alioshin described the Baron as wearing an exotic combination of cherry-red Chinese jacket with blue Imperial Russian Army breeches and surrounded by ‘barbaric luxury and glory’. Before this army, refugees began to stream, fuelling the stories of his barbaric behaviour. Alioshin recorded the appalling punishments meted out to anyone who crossed the Baron’s path: ‘the village of Buluktai was burned with the inhabitants locked in their huts; Captain Vishnevsky was whipped to death; the Baron strangled Colonels Lihachev and Yahontov; his adjutant killed Korotkov just to get his young and pretty wife; Dr Engelgard-Esersky was burned alive at the stake.’ When one of his Russian officers decided he had had enough of this depravity and deserted with a troop of cavalry, Ungern-Sternberg sent a party of Chahar Mongols after them. The tribesmen returned with a sack of ears cut off the now-dead Russians.
The target of Ungern-Sternberg’s campaign was Urga, now Ulan-Bator, Mongolia’s capital city. Set in a broad valley surrounded by low hills, it was neither a large nor a sophisticated settlement, consisting of a few utilitarian buildings surrounded by tents or yurts pitched by nomadic tribesmen passing by. Pounded by harsh, dry, cold winds most of the year, it became virtually impregnable when the winter snows piled around its walls. Ungern-Sternberg, however, had little to fear, for his soothsayers had consulted their oracle bones and guaranteed him good luck in the venture. The Chinese defenders, having heard the many horrific tales running before the Baron, trusted to something more practical and sited their machine-guns in trenches around the perimeter of the city. Although taking the threat seriously, the Chinese felt confident, as their forces clearly outnumbered the bizarre array of warriors before them.
On 26 October, Ungern-Sternberg led his first attack on the Mongolian capital at night. Ladislaus Forbath, a Western traveller and trader within the city, described the impact of the assault: ‘Suddenly there came a high-pitched hiss, immediately followed by a terrific explosion, and a cloud of dust rose in front of the house… we guessed that Baron Ungern-Sternberg was bombarding the Chinese barracks close by, and we were confirmed in this belief as grenade after grenade exploded in front of the house.’
Despite this initial onslaught, Ungern-Sternberg’s warriors were outnumbered by the Chinese, and well entrenched machine-gun crews caught them in a savage cross-fire. Swept by snowstorms, the Baron retreated to the hills and waited five days. He then attacked for a second time, but was again beaten back. With the severe Mongolian winter descending, Ungern-Sternberg retreated east and then south, placing himself across the crucial supply road from Peking to Urga. Living by looting the surrounding countryside, he gained time to strengthen his army, while the Chinese were running short of supplies for their own forces in Urga.
A suicidal bluff
On the night of 31 January, in snow and darkness, Ungern-Sternberg’s horde returned to the hills outside Urga as he instructed his men to begin another assault. This time, he employed psychological warfare. In order to give the impression of a far greater army than he in fact possessed, the Baron had some of his men light fires in the surrounding hills – so the Chinese might think that his army had encircled them. According to Alioshin, the Baron’s army had dwindled severely. Owing to the initial lack of success and the bitter winter, there were now only 1,700 bandits against 12,000 Chinese soldiers. It was a suicidal bluff, but Ungern-Sternberg had no other choice if he still wished to fulfil his barbarian fantasy.
As zero hour approached, very high winds from across the Mongolian steppe delayed the arrival of the Baron’s ox-drawn artillery, and it was dawn by the time the main attack began. With the shock of surprise lost, the Chinese were able to scramble to their guns and let loose a storm of shells and machine-gun fire that hammered the attacking Mongols and Russians. The Mongol horsemen were particularly vulnerable to the sustained fire and also least likely to hang around to be mown down, unlike the Russian veterans of World War I. A special assault squad of Russians and Tibetans had greater luck: they successfully managed to free the Bogd Khan, the ‘Living Buddha’, from Chinese imprisonment, also grabbing a store of Chinese ammunition and machine-guns in the palace, which they rushed to the main battlefront.
The morale among the Chinese defenders was low, and over three days at least 2,000 Chinese soldiers deserted. On the third day, Ungern-Sternberg led his final attack. ‘Immediately the Chinese opened unsystematic and mad shooting,’ recalled Alioshin. ‘Machine-guns began their dreadful clattering. The temptation was too great and, contrary to orders, we dashed forward into battle. The Baron was carried away by the mad impulse also, as we saw him galloping on his white horse in front of our lines, directing us towards the enemy’s barbed wire.’ Hand-to-hand fighting quickly followed, with the Russian cavalry attacking the Chinese from the rear.
Alioshin gives a frightening vision of the barbaric chaos: ‘Mad with revenge and hatred, the conquerors began plundering the city. Drunken horsemen galloped along the streets and killing at their fancy, breaking into houses, dragging property outside into the dirty streets, dressing themselves in rich silks found in the shops. In front of the Chinese banks, lines were formed, where each man was given the right to plunge his bloody hand inside the strongboxes and get what his luck would bring him. Some were fortunate enough to drag out gold coins and bullion. Some were less fortunate and got silver, while many found only paper currency and banknotes, which they immediately threw into the streets as worthless.’ This was, after all, a barbarian army. Worse was to follow in a three-day orgy of violence.
On the morning of the fourth day, Ungern-Sternberg ordered an end to the bloodshed, rape, and plunder. Many of his warriors were too drunk to notice, having sometimes shot their own comrades in the chaos of the moment, and these were strung up immediately as a warning to the rest. A shopkeeper somewhat rashly asked the Baron if the corpses hanging outside his shop could be cut down, as he was losing valuable business.
Through luck and bluff, Baron Ungern-Sternberg had achieved his barbarian destiny. He now lived like an ancient warlord, surrounded by the gilded trappings of a Khan of the steppes, along with his Mongolian princess. Protecting him were Buddhist bodyguards clad in medieval armour, and a horde of Cossack and Mongol horsemen, all defended by an array of 20th-century weapons. With this vision of himself as the new Genghis Khan completed, he set about preaching a crusade in which he declared it was the duty of every White Russian and every Mongolian to crush the Reds and destroy the Communist realm.
His ambition now fully inflated, Ungern-Sternberg pulled up his tents and advanced northwards out of Mongolia along the road from Urga to Troiskosavsk, near Lake Baikal, with the intention of cutting the Trans-Siberian railway line between Irkutsk and eastern China. On 27 May 1921, on the advice of his soothsayers, Ungern-Sternberg declared himself Emperor of all Russia. For the ears of the Reds in Moscow, he made one further pledge: to plant an ‘avenue of gallows’ from Mongolia to Moscow from which he would hang every Bolshevik he could lay his hands on.
‘The tribes of Genghis Khan’s successors are awakened,’ the Baron told his followers. ‘Nobody shall extinguish the fire in the heart of the Mongols. In Asia, there will be a great state from the Pacific and Indian Oceans to the shore of the Volga. The wise religion of Buddha shall run to the north and the west.’
Final destiny
Back in Moscow, the Bolsheviks had heard of events in Mongolia, and although every corner of their new Communist empire demanded attention, they knew they had to stop the bloody Baron from spreading his counter-revolution throughout Siberia. Red Army soldiers took to their trains and rattled along the Trans-Siberian railway, where they joined up with an army of Mongolian Communists intent on establishing the second Socialist state in the world after Russia. These Mongolians were led by a capable commander called Damdin Sükhbaatar, or Sukhe-Bator. The two forces clashed on the Mongolian–Russian border in several skirmishes, much of it being fought by gunmen on horseback, testing each other’s resolve with swift raiding assaults and ambushes. ‘We were in the middle of the forest when the Reds opened deadly fire,’ remembered Alioshin. ‘Our men were swept from their feet like grass before a scythe. Men and horses were piled together in bloody heaps.’
When the Whites gained the upper hand, the Baron was true to his words of retribution. ‘We shot every prisoner,’ wrote Alioshin. ‘The prisoners were forced to dig large communal graves at which they were subsequently lined up.’ Photographs survive of the killing fields taken a few years later, in which piles of bleached skulls and bones lay scattered on the bleak Mongolian steppe where they fell.
Realising they could expect no mercy whatsoever, the Bolsheviks fought with tenacity and even more cunning than the Baron. The Mongolian Bolsheviks of Sukhe-Bator could see their own great barbarian prize to be plucked out of the chaos of civil war, and they possessed a power as violent and ruthless as that of the Baron. In many ways, Ungern-Sternberg had met his match in the form of another Mongolian warlord. Even the Baron’s men were becoming weary of the constant struggle, and as they looked on their leader, now without a jacket and wearing ‘on his naked chest numerous Mongolian talismans and charms hung on a bright yellow cord’, they saw not a great commander, but a suicidal madman.
In the middle of a cold Mongolian night, a small number of the Baron’s warriors crept out of their tents and assembled a machine-gun in front of their commander’s ornate yurt. Praying to their gods while they pulled the trigger, the machine-gun tore through the panels of felt, throwing splinters of metal and wood everywhere. When the gunners paused, they were shocked to see the Baron still alive, running out of the chaos to mount his horse and disappear into the darkness. Maybe the Baron truly was the ghostly reincarnation of Genghis Khan, and as such was indestructible.
The great crusade was over, however. Hounded by the Red Army and Mongolian Communists, the White Army disintegrated, with many of the Russians escaping to China. Urga fell to the Red Army of Sukhe-Bator, and Mongolia became a Communist nation. A few diehards accompanied the Baron into the wilderness, but he was badly wounded and his mind no longer able to conjure up any plan. Alioshin accompanied him until ‘bleeding, exhausted and helpless, Baron von Ungern-Sternberg slid from his saddle and fell to the ground unconscious.’
Days later, a Red Army patrol came across the Baron, writhing in agony as he tried to shake giant ants off his body. Uncertain who this half-eaten figure was, a Russian cavalryman dismounted and stepped towards him. ‘Who are you?’ he asked softly. ‘I am Baron von Ungern-Sternberg!’, screamed the broken man in response.
The Bolsheviks threw Ungern-Sternberg over the back of one of their horses, and – according to The Times of 13 September 1921 – he was exhibited ‘as a monster’ at stations along the Trans-Siberian Railway. At Novosibirsk in Siberia, he was put on trial for his many crimes. Unsurprisingly, the Soviet court found him guilty and sentenced him to death several times over. On 15 September 1921, he stood in front of a firing squad and smiled – before a crack of gunshots finally ended his barbarian fantasy.
Tim Newark is the author of numerous books about military history, and was the editor of Military Illustrated magazine for 17 years. He has written previously about the Mongolian Civil War of 1920-1921 under the pen name L F Wildman.
All images: Wikimedia Commons, unless otherwise stated
