Stupid Wars : A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous R

“Internationale.”

Cons — Formed the Soviet Union.

Admiral Alexander Kolchak — caught up in the excitement of being headquartered in the city of Omsk, in Western Siberia, 1,500 miles from Moscow, the former admiral promoted himself Supreme Ruler of Russia.

Skinny — He looked good in his admiral’s uniform and had the support of the Western countries.

Props — Stole the tsar’s entire gold reserve.

Pros — Was devoted to destroying the Bolsheviks.

Cons — Naval tactics don’t work well on land.

Major General William Graves — General Graves, having not exactly distinguished himself by defending the San Francisco front during World War I, received the unenviable task of overthrowing the Russian government with a pint-sized infantry division.

Skinny — His final orders from the secretary of war at a train station in Kansas City were “God bless you and good-bye.”

Props — In Russia he quickly realized his troops were better off fighting hangovers than Bolsheviks.

Pros — Was not fooled into believing the Siberian adventure was going to turn out well.

Cons — Read Wilson’s ridiculous memo, figured the turgid affair would end badly but dutifully went anyway.

THE GENERAL SITUATION

Wars make strange bedfellows, and World War I was no dif­ferent. The United States, Britain, and France, along with a bunch of small countries that always fight alongside the major allies but no one really pays attention to, joined to­gether against the Kaiser’s Germany and Austria. The tsar wasn’t really a democratic kind of guy, but because of a series of interlocking treaties that no one really understood, the Russians somehow ended up on the French/British team against the Germans/Austrians/Turks for the first big show of the very bloody twentieth century.

After millions of casualties suffered by the inept Russian armies, the huddled masses back home in Russia revolted and in early 1917 overthrew the tsar, replacing him with the provisional government. This was welcome news for the Allies as the new government featured a much more demo­cratic sounding name than the Kingdom of Russia.

But Russia was weakening. Russian democrats, landless serfs mostly, had finally grown weary of the centuries-long role of cannon fodder for the grandiosely inept Russian of­ficers. The Russian peasant cannon fodder, however, were highly valued by the French, British, and Americans be­cause the vast Russian army tied down equally large num­bers of German troops on the eastern front. The Allies feared that if the massive number of German serf-fighting troops became free to hit the western front, they would probably roll right up to the English Channel in about six weeks. The French believed, of course, that this could never, ever happen.

The situation in Russia took a horrifyingly dramatic turn for the Allies in late 1917 when the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky, took over the country in a neatly executed coup (disguised cleverly as a revolution), pushing aside the provi­sional government, proving that if your goal is to establish a new government, and you call it the provisional government, it probably will be.

For the Allies, having a bunch of Bolsheviks as their new allies in charge of Russia was bad enough. But in February 1918, when they declared they would stop fighting the impe­rialistic, capitalistic war against Germany and that their sol­diers would go home, the Allies suffered the blow of peace heavily. The removal of Russia meant the potential transfer of about seventy German divisions from the eastern to west­ern theater of war.

The Bolsheviks eagerly signed the treaty of Brest Litovsk on March 3, 1918, handing themselves a complete and utter defeat. This happy event for the Kaiser cleared the way for a vast German spring offensive designed to push the belea­guered Allies beyond the breaking point. The Allies were desperate to get the Russians back in the game. If this meant changing its government one more time, so be it. And if changing the government of Russia meant ending the experi­ment in communism, whose stated goal was to eradicate capitalism and destroy all the Allied governments, well, that’s why bonuses are handed out.

The Allies agreed that with a world war already in prog­ress, an invasion made perfect sense. Unfortunately, President Wilson had already whipped out his Fourteen Point Plan for everlasting world peace; it stated emphatically that countries should be allowed to rule themselves, which was what the Russians were doing in spades. Despite his plan for world perfection, he threw his ideals overboard, under pressure from the British and French.

Fortunately, a cover story dropped into Wilson’s lap in the form of the lost Czech legion. The legion, nearly 30,000 men strong, had been fighting the Germans and Austrians along­side the tsar’s serfs, who kept dying in order to keep them­selves in bondage to their dim-witted ruler. Once the Russians pulled out of the war, the Czechs, their ranks filled out by deserters from the Austrian army, became soldiers without a war. The Czechs received permission from the Bol­sheviks to ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad to the port of Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, from where the effortlessly feckless French had kindly agreed to transport them safely back to the charnel house of the western front.

The Allies now had their cover story: the Czech troops needed help. Plus, there was a lot of equipment the Allies had sent the ungrateful Russians, which sat rusting on the docks of Vladivostok as well as the northern Russian ports of Archangel and Murmansk. The Allies owned the equip­ment, and if the Russians were going to quit playing war, they wanted it back.

When the secretary of war handed Wilson’s memo to Graves in the train station in Kansas City on August 3, 1918, he apologized for sending him to Siberia and promised, someday, to tell him the real reason why he had to go. He told Graves, “Watch your step. You will be walking on eggs loaded with dynamite.” And then he left.

The Aide-Memoire, as the scholarly Woody Wilson named it, is clearly the contortions of a self-loving politician and not the concrete thinking of a military leader. Nevertheless, it represented the only guidance provided to the U.S. invading force. Wilson’s vacuous freshman paper was actually a unique diplomatic soufflé, a noninvasive invasion, and not the gigantic playbook one would expect for conquering the world’s largest country. Graves was left to ponder the con­fusing seven-page invasion memo that contained one unspo­ken message that rang out like a bell: Invade Russia, but don’t cause trouble.

WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “SIBERIAN STORM”

Graves, despite being caught in a fantastical situation, re­mained stubbornly rational and interpreted the confusing memo as an order to maintain total neutrality after invad­ing. Upon landing in Vladivostok (approximately 5,000 miles away from the seat of power in Moscow) on Septem­ber 1, 1918, General Graves discovered his micro- invasion force surrounded by enemies: hostile Russians, both Bolshe­vik and anti-Bolshevik (the Whites), as well as the French and British who were openly working to oust the Bolsheviks and trying to trick the Americans into helping them by shooting someone. Vladivostok itself was controlled by a portion of Czech troops apparently trying to figure out how to get their brethren, who were stuck in the middle of Sibe­ria, out to Vladivostok.

In addition, a large force of Japanese troops were hun­kered down trying to take advantage of the chaos in Russia to gobble up chunks of Russian territory. Graves quickly de­duced that virtually any activity by U.S. troops could cause a confrontation with one of these armed groups. He approved a plan designed to thwart all the threats against the valiant American doughboys: guarding empty buildings for which the U.S. government was also paying the Russian landlords rent, exploring the city, drinking vodka, and chasing women. They bunked in the old tsarist barracks, which had been built without bathing facilities — in the Russian style.