Did You Know the U.S. Had Troops in Siberia? (economic, state)
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I attended a very good high school and thought I was well aware of US military history. That is why this caught me by surprise. It appears, whenever I get the time, I need to dig deeper into this.
I always assumed the allied powers stop fighting the "reds" after the end of WW1 since the point was to keep Russia in the war fighting the Central Powers.
The USA sent 5000 men into Northern Russia in 1918-1919, mainly to aid the White Russians against the Bolsheviks, the so called Polar Bear Expedition. This topic has had some discussion on this forum for those willing to do a search. This event is not all that obscure, most serious history buffs are at least somewhat familiar with it.
It was never taught in my high school (in Florida, go figure), but I learned about it at a later time from reading up on history. My understanding is that the USA's primary concern was protecting supplies coming into the coastal ports of Northern Russia and preventing their seizure by the Bolsheviks. We provided only token combat forces to asst the British, French, and Japanese. As I understand it, the Japanese sent a much larger force to invade from Manchuria, but were compelled to withdraw at a later stage due to pressure from the western Allies.
You didn't? They had expeditionary corpus attempting to capture Murmansk in 1918. Didn't work too good. I wouldn't call it Siberia, as it's Russian North known as Zapoliarye, or past the polar circle. But very important port, that's where land lease convoys landed during WW2.
Pet subject of mine. (One of many.) I did not learn about in HS but then most of what I have learned is from reading outside of school at any level.
Still looking for a good military history of the RCW. Most tend to be political. Thanks to google translate mucho is available on Russian sites and those boys are very liberal with copyright. Complete books available online.
The Hoover Institution has just released a series of diaries and photos from the American Expeditionary Force Siberia from 1918 to 1920/
I never, ever heard of it? And I've spent some time reading up on American armed forces history. I checked Wiki and its blurb wasn't all that big.
Yes, to fight the communists, IIRC. Alexander Kerensky was the leader of Russia before the communists took over. Later on, (which years?) he had an affiliation with the Hoover Institution and taught at Stanford U.
We provided only token combat forces to asst the British, French, and Japanese.
Our participation was not bloodless. The US suffered over 500 casualties, 245 dead, 305 wounded. It can be correctly stated that we spilled Communist blood and they spilled ours decades before the Cold War, Korea, or Vietnam.
Yes, I am aware of it and I have a number of books on the subject. There were quite a few Interventionist countries besides the US in Russia such as Czechs, Greeks, Italians, French, Brits, Japanese (largest contingent), as well as others.
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