Titans of History

UNGERN VON STERNBERG

1886–1921

Even Death is better than the Baron.

Refugee fleeing from the rule of Ungern in Mongolia

In 1920, Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, a sadistic, mystical Russian warlord obsessed with Genghis Khan, Buddhism and anti-Semitism, conquered Mongolia with a ramshackle army of Russian and Mongol cavalry. The crazy reign of this psychotic Mongolian-Baltic Colonel Kurtz—“the Bloody Baron”—is one of the most grotesque stories of modern times and personifies the murderous tragedy of the Russian Civil War in which millions perished.

Born in the Austrian city of Graz, Ungern was a Baltic nobleman of German descent, raised in Tallinn, capital of Estonia, then part of the Russian empire. He joined the Russian army, serving in the disastrous Russo-Japanese War and earning demotions for thuggery. Aristocratic connections repeatedly saved him. His service in the Far East sparked his fascination with Buddhism, albeit of a kind far removed from the trendy peacenik version of film stars today; it was already linked to the anti-Semitism that would attract the then Dalai Lama to Nazi racial theories.

In the First World War Ungern rose to cavalry general, and when the Bolsheviks seized power he joined the Whites in the Far East and fought under another fascinating psychopath, the Cossack Ataman (chief) Semenov, backed by Japan. He was given command of a division of Asian cavalry within Semenov’s self-declared “Mongol-Buryats Republic.” Though resolutely anti-Bolshevik, the two men enjoyed a fractious relationship with the other White armies opposed to the Reds, defying the authority of Admiral Kolchak, supreme ruler of the Whites, and operating independently.

Ungern governed a small town, Dauria, where he presided over a hellish crew of bloodthirsty torturers who killed any Bolsheviks or Jews. Turning against Semenov, he created a private army of Buryats, Tartars, Cossacks and tsarist officers that resembled a medieval host. Ungern personifies the tragic brutality of the Russian Civil War (1918–21), in which communist commissars, savage White warlords, generals, anarchists, nationalists, Cossacks and cut-throat anti-Semites managed to kill (by massacre or starvation) 10–20 million people.

Ungern was obsessed with his role in history: to restore monarchy under Nicholas II’s brother, Grand Duke Michael (actually already killed by Bolsheviks), in Russia and restore Genghis Khan’s glory and the rule of the living god-king, the perverted Bogd Khan, in Mongolia. In a savagely inept campaign, Ungern managed to expel Chinese troops, take the Mongolian capital Urga (now Ulan Bator), and restore the Bogd Khan with himself as dictator (aided by Tibetan troops lent by the Dalai Lama).

His reign was a surreal fiesta of tyranny, torture and murder. Unfortunate victims—whether communist, Jewish or merely the well-off—suffered frenzied beatings (“Did you know men can still walk when flesh and bone is separated?”), beheading, burning alive, dismemberment and disembowelment, exposure naked on ice, or being torn apart by wild animals. Some were dragged by a noose behind moving cars, hunted through streets by Cossacks, forced naked up trees until they fell out and were shot, or tied between bent-back branches, which when released would rip their bodies apart.

Ungern had long adhered to a quasi-religious mysticism that for many—with the Revolution and the Civil War—took on a millenarian bent, anticipating a coming apocalypse, the collapse of society and the creation of a “new world order.” Ungern came to see himself as the reincarnation of Genghis Khan. He hated Jews, whom he killed wherever possible, claiming “the Jews are not protected by any law … neither men nor women nor their seed should remain.” Even women and children were not spared.

In June 1921, Ungern’s armies were defeated by the Bolsheviks. He himself was seriously wounded, and, as he attempted to flee, his surviving troops mutinied and attempted to kill him. They failed, but in August handed him over to the Bolsheviks. The “Bloody Baron” was transported back to Russia in a cage, given a public show trial in the city of Novosibirsk, and executed by firing squad on September 15, 1921.