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.
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