The Polar Bear Expedition

Book Notes #30

The Polar Bear Expedition is a 2019 book by James Carl Nelson consisting of a history of the American expedition to Russia in 1918-1919, mostly told as a series of vignettes through the eyes of soldiers party to the events, some of whom subsequently wrote memoirs of the experience.

The author describes the debate in Wilson’s White House on whether or not the United States of America should send soldiers to Russia. Wilson was considering it, but some excuse was needed to justify military intervention. The British were especially concerned about war material shipped to Murmansk falling into German hands after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and pressured the Americans to commit troops to the existing Franco-British garrison in Russia. The British and other interested parties wanted to combat the Bolshevik menace in addition to securing territory from the Germans.

A Czech army had involved itself in the Russian Civil War, and had split itself in two, one part heading through Siberia to Vlaidivostok, and another toward Ekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. The fate of these Czechs was unknown, and finding the “lost legion” of Czechs to “rescue” them and recreate the Eastern Front provided Wilson with an excuse to intervene militarily.

Wilson decided that these factors were enough to commit an American force to Russia, but they were sent without a clear mission. The decisive part of Wilson’s July 17th 1918 aide-mémoire reads:

“It is the clear and fixed judgment of the Government of the United States, arrived at after repeated and very searching reconsiderations of the whole situation in Russia, that military intervention there would add to the present sad confusion in Russia rather than cure it, injure her rather than help her, and that it would be of no advantage in the prosecution of our main design, to win the war against Germany. It cannot, therefore, take part in such intervention or sanction it in principle. Military intervention would, in its judgment, even supposing it to be efficacious in its immediate avowed object of delivering an attack upon Germany from the east, be merely a method of making use of Russia, not a method of serving her. Her people could not profit by it, if they profitted by it at all, in time to save them from their present distresses, and their substance would be used to maintain foreign armies, not to reconstitute their own. Military action is admissible in Russia, as the Government of the United States sees the circumstances, only to help the Czecho-Slovaks consolidate their forces and get into successful cooperation with their Slavic kinsmen and to steady any efforts at self government or self defense in which the Russians themselves may be willing to accept assistance. Whether from Vladivostok or from Murmansk and Archangel, the only legitimate object for which American or allied troops can be employed, it submits, is to guard military stores which may subsequently be needed by Russian forces and to render such aid as may be acceptable to the Russians in the organization of their own self-defense. For helping the Czecho-Slovaks there is immediate necessity and sufficient justification. Recent developments have made it evident that that it is in the interest of what the Russian people themselves desire, and the Government of the United States is glad to contribute the small force at its disposal for that purpose. It yields, also, to the judgment of the Supreme Command in the matter of establishing a small force at Murmansk, to guard the military stores at Kola and to make it safe for Russian forces to come together in organized bodies in the north. But it owes it to frank counsel to say that it can go no further than these modest and experimental plans. It is not in a position and has no expectation of being in a position, to take part in organized intervention in adequate force from either Vladivostok or Murmansk and Archangel. It feels that it ought to add, also, that it will feel at liberty to use the few troops it can spare only for the purposes here stated and shall feel obliged to withdraw these forces, in order to add them to the forces at the western front, if the plans in whose execution it is now intended that they should develop into others inconsistent with the policy to which the Government of the United States feels constrained to restrict itself.”