He was cruel, ruthless, and violent, but he was also magnetic and was a soldier brave
to the point of foolhardiness.
He was also to many a Divine figure and his legend bears repeating - Baron von Ungern-Sternberg.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War bio Special about Baron von Ungern-Sternberg
and the First World War.
Nikolai Roman Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg was born January 10th, 1886, in Graz, in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
His mother was German and his father Estonian.
His father was declared insane, and his mother married another Estonian nobleman and went
to live in Reval, which is Tallinn today in Estonia, but was then part of Russia.
The family claimed to have Romanov blood - the Russian Tsar’s family - in them and to be
partly Mongolian, but in reality they were mostly German with Hungarian roots.
The Baltic German community was well established as an elite class in Estonia, and in the 19th
century many of them pursued Russian military careers, in service in eastern or central
Asia against the unruly Khanates during that period of Russian colonization.
The young Roman was obsessed with tales of his ancestors - pirates and bandits.
His grades in school were abysmal, but worse than that was his behavior.
He wasn’t a bully; he was the guy bullies are scared of - a sadistic and violent young
man who was eventually expelled from school.
His father pulled some strings and got him into the Marine Academy in St. Petersburg,
but neither his grades nor his behavior saw any improvement.
In fact, to get out of the academy, he volunteered for the army; Russia was currently fighting
the Russo-Japanese War.
The 19 year old Roman dreamed of making a difference, but by the time he arrived at
the front the demoralized Russians and the overextended Japanese were at a stalemate.
He did not see action, but emerged from the war as a Corporal, was very impressed with
the Japanese skill and courage, and had seen the Far East for the first time, which to
him was the land of old.
His grandfather had been a privateer in the service of an Indian prince against the British
and had introduced him to Buddhism.
He was also interested in astrology and the occult, which were quite popular at the time
in Russia and Asia, as the old order seemed ready to crack.
The abortive 1905 Russian Revolution took care of that.
The Tsarist rule was indeed threatened, and the monarch’s response bloody, but the response
to his response was violent uprisings.
The Estonian peasantry burned down the Ungern-Sternberg estate.
This served to confirm Roman’s radical beliefs that the peasants were animals, led astray
by Jews.
In fact, Roman was a rabid monarchist, who had no patience for ideas of capitalism or
liberalism.
The Tsar was appointed by God.
His father once again pulled some strings and Roman was enrolled in the prestigious
Paul I Military Academy as a cavalry cadet.
He was a natural athlete and an excellent horseman and he graduated and found service
in a Cossack regiment- the 1st Argum regiment of the Zabaikal Cossacks under General Rennenkampf.
They were stationed near Lake Baikal in Siberia, and lived a nomadic life on the steppes, riding
border patrols against Chinese bandits.
This was a world of magic and adventure for Roman.
He practiced “military Buddhism” and brought others to its cause.
Among other practices, it promoted celibacy, but allowed unlimited alcohol, opium, and
hashish.
In 1913, he arrived in the Mongolian capital city of Urga, which could have been medieval
if not for hunters with rifles.
It had been under Chinese control until 1911 and was now fighting for independence.
There, Roman delved deeper into Buddhist and shamanistic studies.
He was expelled, however, from the Cossacks for his violent behavior, and only the outbreak
of the world war got him reinstated and sent to the Eastern Front.
There, he was exposed to some of the most brutal, bloody, and stupid fighting of the
war, making suicidal charges against entrenched machine guns and artillery.
Cossack casualties were 3-4 times higher than they were anywhere else in the Russian army.
He took part in the invasion of East Prussia, the defeat at Tannenberg, the Battle of Galicia,
and the fighting in the Carpathians.
He was wounded five times, which isn’t surprising since he volunteered for the most dangerous
missions and rode at the head of formations.
“Ungern´s survival was due partly to blind luck, partly to an almost suicidal absence
of fear.
As he was to show winning his medals, he could do things so madly heroic that his enemies
would often pause in sheer astonishment.”
The war on the Eastern Front reminded him often of the vast steppes of Central Asia.
Instead of the enclosed killing zones of the west, the vast regions and deep forests of
the east dwarfed the men, who were surrounded by nothingness with only death ahead of them.
Humanity became increasingly absent; cruelty and violence took its stead.
The war worsened him.
A large part of his activities as a Cossack were raiding parties, rushing in short, violent
bursts deep into enemy lines where there was no time to take prisoners or distinguish between
soldier and civilian.
He was awarded the Cross of St. George 4th Class, but in late 1916, after serving a sentence
in military prison for yet another violent drunken rage against his superiors, was assigned
to the Black Baron - General Pyotr Vrangel - and sent to Lake Urmia, now in Northern
Iran.
He was there when the February Russian revolution of 1917 broke down the machinery of state.
The following Kerensky Government, to Ungern, was a total mess, but at least it was some
sort of authority, compared to the Bolshevik rule after the October revolution, but it
allowed his regiment to travel to Mongolia once more, to recruit men to fight against
the revolutionaries once Russia left the World War.
In 1918, counter-revolutionary White Army forces outnumbered the Bolshevik Red Army
by a considerable amount, but they lacked cohesion.
Anarchists, monarchists, republicans, socialists, they had different ideologies and were scattered
across the former empire, while the Bolsheviks could draw on the industry of Petrograd and
Moscow and the remnants of the old army.
FHG: Y'know I had no idea about this guy, it truly is fascinating how widespread the
ramifications of the Russian Revolution were.
Indy: Yeah, it really is.
But what also might be interesting is to know who you are
FHG: Well you see, I'm the guy behind Feature History, often known as Feature History guy.
If you wanna see some drawings with no eyes bouncing about talking about the Polish-Soviet
War, I have something like that.
Indy: That sounds pretty cool, it's also not a conflict a lot of people know about.
I'll certainly drop by later to check it out.
FHG: Be there or be square.
Ungern believed the salvation of Russia lay with the people of the borders.
With the aid of a fake armored train, Mongol warriors, Chinese merchants, Japanese arms
dealers and “volunteers”, as well as help from the Czech Legion and the Americans of
the Siberian Expeditionary Force, he began building his army.
It didn’t hurt that the Cheka - the Red secret police - were running a reign of terror
in Siberia at the time, and the consequent stream of refugees swelled his ranks.
His Special Manchurian Mounted Division crossed the border into Russia.
Raids and skirmishes against the Red Guard procured ammunition and supplies, and soon
he had his own regime in the Dauria region.
He called himself Baron and established a feudal rule of nearly medieval tradition,
and though his rule was culturally tolerant, violence or the threat of violence as the
order of the day.
So each race was welcome, and just about all Gods were, though Jews were hanged on sight,
and Bolsheviks brutally tortured before being hanged or clubbed to death.
He became known as the Bloody Baron and rumors and legends about him abounded; he had people
skinned alive, he had a pack of wolves that he fed with his enemies, he was the God of
War reborn and was favored by the Dalai Lama.
It is true that death trains accompanied him, transporting captured enemies to torture chambers,
and his Mongolian bodyguards revered him as a god.
He, however, saw his violence not as torture, but as punishment and a means to maintain
discipline.
It’s not really my place to talk about postwar activity, though the Russian Civil War certainly
ties in with the world war.
I’m pretty sure a bunch of you are gonna look up the rest of his story, though.
Ungern never abandoned his belief in the restoration of the Tsar, believing that Michael Romanov
would rule, not learning of his murder.
He fell out with the other White Army leaders because of his autocratic rule, but he conquered
the Mongolian capital at one point, and fought the Red Army until his capture and execution.
That last happened after his attempt to cross the Gobi Desert - without supplies - and reach
Tibet, turned even his most diehard supporters to mutiny.
His life ended with a trial and a firing squad in September 1921 at the age of 35.
Baron von Ungern-Sternberg was quite likely a psychopath, but he was definitely one of
the most colorful characters of the Great War and its immediate aftermath, and we thought
you’d find his story - though not as important to the war as many of our other bio specials
- extremely interesting.
Thank you Markus Linke for the research on this episode.
If you want to learn more about the Polish-Soviet War which also is a lesser known consequence
of the Russian Revolution, you can click right here to watch the episode on Feature History.
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time.