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The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia
In the history of the modern world, there have been few characters more sadistic, sinister, and deeply demented as Baron Ungern-Sternberg. An anti-Semitic fanatic with a penchant for Eastern mysticism and a hatred of communists, Baron Ungern-Sternberg took over Mongolia in 1920 with a ragtag force of White Russians, Siberians, Japanese, and native Mongolians. While tormenting friend and foe alike, he dreamed of assembling a horse-borne army with which he would retake communist controlled Moscow. In this epic saga that ranges from Austria to the Mongolian Steppe, historian and travel writer James Palmer has brought to light the gripping life story of a madman whose actions fore shadowed the most grotesque excesses of the twentieth century.
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First published March 20, 2008
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About the author
James Palmer
5 books10 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Please see: James Palmer
James Palmer has traveled extensively in East and Central Asia and has worked with Taoist and Buddhist groups in China and Mongolia on environmental issues. In 2003 he won the Spectator's Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing. He lives in Beijing.
source: Amazon
Please see: James Palmer
James Palmer has traveled extensively in East and Central Asia and has worked with Taoist and Buddhist groups in China and Mongolia on environmental issues. In 2003 he won the Spectator's Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing. He lives in Beijing.
source: Amazon
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 176 reviews
June 10, 2021
It's OK, I guess. Palmer's actually a pretty colorful writer, but the problem with his subject, Baron Ungern-Sternberg, is that there's not a whole lot of reliable documentation on him as a person. There's little doubt that the Baron was a psychopath, but the Devil is in the lack of concrete details. The setting, post WW 1 Mongolia, is about as distant as it gets. Add in to that the murky murderous stew of competing powers (Red Russians, White Russians, Japanese, Chinese, Mongolians, soldiers of fortune), and it's pretty much impossible, other than the general outlines of what actually occurred, to figure out who was killing who at any given time. Because there's so little on the Baron, the book feels very padded with information that is sometimes of interest and sometimes so far afield that you the sense the author trying to reach some sort of page count. The Baron, in Palmer's hands, comes across as a weird combination of Fu Manchu, Kurtz, and Vlad the Impaler, but without the charm of any of them. That may be accurate, but it's not all that well sourced, unless you feel comfortable with "It was said.." umpteen number of times. Given Palmer's obvious writing ability, I kind of wished he would have considered mining this story, and turning it into some sort of Pulp Horror novel.
September 2, 2025
I have read books about the Russian Civil War. The name Ungern-Sternberg comes up often, but there is little detail given except broad statements about his ruthlessness. This book explains who the man was and where he came from, though it concentrates on his activities in Mongolia. The portrait we have is of a man who was savage in the extreme and undoubtedly crazy. Some of his cruel tortures, punishments and executions are described in the book. His deepest hatreds and most cruel punishments were meted out to the Red Russians and to Jews, though new group including his own men were spared his wrath.
The reader is left with the impression that Ungern was doing this all the time. It is as if a day without one or more heinous tortured or executions was very rare. This is a man touted as a mystic who claimed to be a Buddhist. Ultimately Ungern's grip on Mongolia is broken and he is taken back to Russia.
If you are interested in the Russian Civil War, Central Asia or White Russian battle commanders this is a very informative book. It also gives an interesting Asian view to Buddhism that one does not see in discussions about the religion in the West. It does seem a bit repetitive, which is what kept me from giving it a higher score. Nonetheless it does shed light on what for most people, including myself, is a blank spot in world history.
The reader is left with the impression that Ungern was doing this all the time. It is as if a day without one or more heinous tortured or executions was very rare. This is a man touted as a mystic who claimed to be a Buddhist. Ultimately Ungern's grip on Mongolia is broken and he is taken back to Russia.
If you are interested in the Russian Civil War, Central Asia or White Russian battle commanders this is a very informative book. It also gives an interesting Asian view to Buddhism that one does not see in discussions about the religion in the West. It does seem a bit repetitive, which is what kept me from giving it a higher score. Nonetheless it does shed light on what for most people, including myself, is a blank spot in world history.
June 6, 2012
I have always been interested in Mongolia, because of its remoteness from Europe, its inaccessibility, and its obscurity. Until recently, it was a country as impenetrable as, say, North Korea, but now that is no longer the case.
I never dreamt that I would ever treat Mongolian patients or would work with Mongolian dental assistants (many of them are dentists trained in Mongolia), but now I do!
So, when someone on Goodreads, having read my brief review of The Russian Fascists: Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925-1945, recommended The Bloody White Baron, I ordered it immediately.
The Baron, Ungern-Sternberg, the villainous hero of the book was born in Graz (Austria) and brought up in the now popular Estonian tourist destination Tallinn (formerly 'Reval'). His family were Baltic Germans with a heritage extending back to the German warlords who expanded the German lands eastwards in mediaeval times. He is also supposed to have had some connection with the Imperial Russian royal family. He regarded himself first and foremost as a Russian, and this accounts for his intense disappointment with the fall of the Tsar and the eventual rise of the Bolsheviks.
The Baron became a fanatic member of the White Armies opposed to the Bolsheviks, and was active militarily in the Russian Far East.
Imbued with a fascination with mysticism and also Buddhism, and also realising that the White armies were losing ground to the Bolshevik Red Army, he entered Mongolia, hoping to rouse the Mongolians and other eastern Asians such as the Buriats into reviving the conquering hordes of Genghis Khan. His plan, briefly summarised, was to overrun Russia and the West and to re-establish ther rule of the Tsar.
The plot thickens as Ungern-Sternberg has to deal with the Chinese occupiers of Mongolia and a wide variety of other opponents. And as the plot thickens, so does the Baron's cruel behaviour.
Eventually, the Baron becomes the de facto military ruler of Mongolia, but not for long.
All of this and much more that I have not mentioned, one could imagine, should make for exciting reading. However, although James Palmer was able to interest me, he was unable to excite me in his The Bloody White Baron.
On the back of the book, Colin Thubron is quoted as having said, "A wonderfully lucid resurrection of a forgotten history and its terrible protagonist. James Palmer here establishes himself both as scholar and writer." This may be apt, but I found the book's style to be dry, and I would question that the book really does establish the author as a 'writer', at least not one, whose writing attracts me. He is not an Alistair Horne or a Thomas Pakenham, who are both writers of history whose scholarly works read like good novels.
The book lacks illustrations apart from those on the dust-jacket. This is a pity considering that the author did visit Mongolia and also must have had access to old photographs in the material that he researched.
To summarise, this book is about fascinating subject, but, sadly, it is written uninterestingly.
I never dreamt that I would ever treat Mongolian patients or would work with Mongolian dental assistants (many of them are dentists trained in Mongolia), but now I do!
So, when someone on Goodreads, having read my brief review of The Russian Fascists: Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925-1945, recommended The Bloody White Baron, I ordered it immediately.
The Baron, Ungern-Sternberg, the villainous hero of the book was born in Graz (Austria) and brought up in the now popular Estonian tourist destination Tallinn (formerly 'Reval'). His family were Baltic Germans with a heritage extending back to the German warlords who expanded the German lands eastwards in mediaeval times. He is also supposed to have had some connection with the Imperial Russian royal family. He regarded himself first and foremost as a Russian, and this accounts for his intense disappointment with the fall of the Tsar and the eventual rise of the Bolsheviks.
The Baron became a fanatic member of the White Armies opposed to the Bolsheviks, and was active militarily in the Russian Far East.
Imbued with a fascination with mysticism and also Buddhism, and also realising that the White armies were losing ground to the Bolshevik Red Army, he entered Mongolia, hoping to rouse the Mongolians and other eastern Asians such as the Buriats into reviving the conquering hordes of Genghis Khan. His plan, briefly summarised, was to overrun Russia and the West and to re-establish ther rule of the Tsar.
The plot thickens as Ungern-Sternberg has to deal with the Chinese occupiers of Mongolia and a wide variety of other opponents. And as the plot thickens, so does the Baron's cruel behaviour.
Eventually, the Baron becomes the de facto military ruler of Mongolia, but not for long.
All of this and much more that I have not mentioned, one could imagine, should make for exciting reading. However, although James Palmer was able to interest me, he was unable to excite me in his The Bloody White Baron.
On the back of the book, Colin Thubron is quoted as having said, "A wonderfully lucid resurrection of a forgotten history and its terrible protagonist. James Palmer here establishes himself both as scholar and writer." This may be apt, but I found the book's style to be dry, and I would question that the book really does establish the author as a 'writer', at least not one, whose writing attracts me. He is not an Alistair Horne or a Thomas Pakenham, who are both writers of history whose scholarly works read like good novels.
The book lacks illustrations apart from those on the dust-jacket. This is a pity considering that the author did visit Mongolia and also must have had access to old photographs in the material that he researched.
To summarise, this book is about fascinating subject, but, sadly, it is written uninterestingly.
October 18, 2011
The subject of this book is a vicious anti-semitic Baltic aristocrat, Baron Ungern-Sternberg, who briefly flared up as a murderous precursor of national socialist ethnic cleansing in Mongolia in the chaos of the post-revolutionary struggle for control of the Russian Empire.
As with the tale of Colonel Despard recently reviewed by us (another marginal figure in another empire at another time), an individual outlier from the norm is an opportunity to weave a story about a particular time and place and permit us to make our own judgements about history.
The comparison with Despard is instructive – the tale of a fundamentally honourable and ‘good’ man out-manouevred by the special interests of a coalescing and rising empire is a fitting contrast to a fundamentally ‘evil’ and cruel man trying to cope with the crumbling of a falling empire.
Here, in two books, we have the best of humanity and the worst of it. We see contrasted, in the Despard book, the worst aspects of society when it is in the hands of the calculating few but what happens when society has no rudder in this one.
The often equally murderous but less gratuitously cruel Bolsheviks (though that changes with time in a general deterioration of conduct) at least occasionally appear more disciplined and engaged in their struggle through something other than fear of the lash.
In the never-ending and futile debate about whether traditionalist anti-semitic slaughtering was equal, ‘better’ or worse than Bolshevik class killing and military ruthlessness, this book tends to suggest that Bolshevism was the lesser evil - at least in 1920/1921.
What Palmer does is put Ungern-Sternberg into context as an extreme member of a brutal class of aristocrats and militarists whose treatment of its peasantry was explanation and justification enough for revolution, if not for Bolshevism.
It was fashionable amongst Western liberals in the wake of the Thatcher-Reagan revolution to produce accounts of Bolshevism that were intended to shift it into the camp of ‘pure evil’ (with the implicit intent of making the Atlantic liberal response to it something close to ‘pure good’).
This was simplistic and never tenable. It systematically covered up the ‘crimes’ of Western liberal imperialism and expansion and the destructive effects of capitalism and it offered wholly retrospective views of men and women operating with weak information and trapped by circumstances.
Bolshevism turned into something monstrous and brutal, as did most of its successor movements, before turning into something dull and sclerotic but it arose for a reason, filled a power vacuum for a reason, held the State for a reason and collapsed for a reason.
To moralise a-historically about these stages, especially the attempt to disconnect the second stage from the first and not recognise that the third was not quite so awful as the second (though still pretty grim) is to educate the student poorly.
It should not be a case of exclaiming ‘oh, how awful’ but ‘why so awful’ and what this awfulness teaches us about the human race under conditions of both tyranny and anarchy. The moralising strikes me as an attempt to deny horrible truths about our species by ‘bien-pensant’ liberals.
This story is a case in point because the charge sheet is not only one of viciousness by Ungern-Sternberg (or indeed of the Bolsheviks) but by his lieutenants and – which will surprise many a gentle Californian ‘bien-pensant’ – the poverty stricken Buddhist cultures of the steppe.
Ungern-Sternberg’s ostensible boss in the region, his friend Semenov, was really just a louche pleasure-loving gangster with no interest in ideology or cruelty for its own sake.
A night in Semenov's harem coach must have been fun and it is interesting that our cruel anti-hero seems to have had no interest in sex at all. Beware politicians and soldiers with no interest in sexual play ...
Semenov was the type of the self-seeking opportunistic gangster warlord that emerged as order collapsed (thanks, in great part, to Western incursions) in China and Russia, from Siberia through Manchuria and into China proper, in the early 1920s.
This was what threatened Russia briefly in the early 1990s when the Soviet system collapsed and this should be remembered by Western liberal critics of Putin. There is a history to his re-assertion of order. Ordinary people are never are served by any sudden collapse in state authority.
But, around Ungern-Sternberg, were men of such sadistic cruelty, that they would be fair warning of the type who would emerge again within the SS and the Bolshevik Secret Police, in the security services of the Post-War World and who once existed in the penal and slavery systems of the West.
The excesses of these people, recounted by Palmer (who allows for exaggerations by their captors and those who write history) are supposed, conventionally, to shock us (I won’t reveal their cruelties here) but they should not. This is us – humanity – under certain conditions of power.
This less charitable view of the human condition under conditions of warlord anarchy and war can be matched by a similar view under conditions of poverty. The excesses of Whites and Reds (and there were good men on both sides) come down to a desperate struggle in chaos and poverty for survival.
The book is extremely good on the political reality of Buddhism – feudal, corrupt, murderous, filled with obscurantism, deeply exploitative of the population, opportunistic over the acquisition and maintenance of power.
Buddhism is certainly not unique in this and there were many good and ‘holy’ monks but this practical reality of the role of organised religion under conditions of feudal poverty explains the reasonable claims of Communists to be progressive in their invasions of such countries.
This is not to say that Communist slaughter of the monks and despoliation of their treasures were not extreme acts equal to those of the Taliban at Bamiyan but that there was a long history to these acts that Western liberals would do well to consider as explanation though not justification.
Above all, the ‘fluffy’ approach to Buddhism that extends a serious religious practice that is extremely demanding and has great truths to offer into silly sexual play, romantic idealism around the cuddly Dalai Lama and a cod eco-internationalism could do with some lessons in history.
This book is worth reading alone for opening our eyes to what organised religion often really is all about in very poor societies – maintaining order through a pact with nobles to exploit the population and using surplus capital for ostentatious display to assert their ‘spiritual’ authority.
Mongolia during the extremely short and brutal period of Ungern-Sternberg’s attempt to create the base for a new Mongolian Empire was a cesspit of cruelty, exploitation and obscurantism and the Mongolians, like all peoples, deserved better.
Palmer also shows how Ungern-Sternberg foreshadowed the Nazis in their thinking and this should not be a surprise in the context of the day.
The neurotic ideology of the Baltic Russo-Germans were part of a more general Slavic intellectual irrationalism that resulted in the useful and poisonous ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ but the intellectual climate was not, in Russia, so much one of nationalism as monarchic traditionalism.
This is a complex issue that is not the core subject of the book and should not be essayed here but understanding it involves understanding how modernisation disrupted exploitative agrarian economies in Eastern Europe and Russia and the role that Jews as traders and intellectuals played in that.
Any analysis must take into account the self-identity of an aristocratic class that genuinely considered itself innately rather than contingently superior, much as Western imperialists came to think of themselves as innately superior to people with different coloured skins and cultures.
Palmer is right to present Ungern-Sternberg in Mongolia as, in effect, a testing ground for reaction to modernisation.
National socialist Germany (under Hitler rather than other national socialists) created a perfect opportunity to express the revolt against modernisation in modernising terms as a technologically-based attempt to seize empire in the Western manner and crush the modernisers.
The Baltic German elite, once their world had been crushed and defeated by Communism, became vectors of resentment and revenge against both Bolshevism and Jewry with an ideology of restored aristocracy but for race and Fuhrer rather than failed Tsar.
Like so many dangerous forces within state and empires, they came from the margins and, having failed in one project, merely transferred to another and refined their cruelties into what would later become a system of organised extermination. This is the world of Alfred Rosenberg.
A recommended book not for its ostensible subject – a rather interesting unhinged but nasty and dim-witted minor aristocrat let loose under anarchic conditions – but for what the adventures of such a man tell us about humanity and society as old worlds crumble and new world are born.
We are in the midst of such a period now. An old world is crumbling and a new world is being born and we have to watch out for ourselves as the solutions being offered to us swing between tyranny and anarchy, giving opportunities to men like Ungern-Sternberg to express themselves in blood.
As with the tale of Colonel Despard recently reviewed by us (another marginal figure in another empire at another time), an individual outlier from the norm is an opportunity to weave a story about a particular time and place and permit us to make our own judgements about history.
The comparison with Despard is instructive – the tale of a fundamentally honourable and ‘good’ man out-manouevred by the special interests of a coalescing and rising empire is a fitting contrast to a fundamentally ‘evil’ and cruel man trying to cope with the crumbling of a falling empire.
Here, in two books, we have the best of humanity and the worst of it. We see contrasted, in the Despard book, the worst aspects of society when it is in the hands of the calculating few but what happens when society has no rudder in this one.
The often equally murderous but less gratuitously cruel Bolsheviks (though that changes with time in a general deterioration of conduct) at least occasionally appear more disciplined and engaged in their struggle through something other than fear of the lash.
In the never-ending and futile debate about whether traditionalist anti-semitic slaughtering was equal, ‘better’ or worse than Bolshevik class killing and military ruthlessness, this book tends to suggest that Bolshevism was the lesser evil - at least in 1920/1921.
What Palmer does is put Ungern-Sternberg into context as an extreme member of a brutal class of aristocrats and militarists whose treatment of its peasantry was explanation and justification enough for revolution, if not for Bolshevism.
It was fashionable amongst Western liberals in the wake of the Thatcher-Reagan revolution to produce accounts of Bolshevism that were intended to shift it into the camp of ‘pure evil’ (with the implicit intent of making the Atlantic liberal response to it something close to ‘pure good’).
This was simplistic and never tenable. It systematically covered up the ‘crimes’ of Western liberal imperialism and expansion and the destructive effects of capitalism and it offered wholly retrospective views of men and women operating with weak information and trapped by circumstances.
Bolshevism turned into something monstrous and brutal, as did most of its successor movements, before turning into something dull and sclerotic but it arose for a reason, filled a power vacuum for a reason, held the State for a reason and collapsed for a reason.
To moralise a-historically about these stages, especially the attempt to disconnect the second stage from the first and not recognise that the third was not quite so awful as the second (though still pretty grim) is to educate the student poorly.
It should not be a case of exclaiming ‘oh, how awful’ but ‘why so awful’ and what this awfulness teaches us about the human race under conditions of both tyranny and anarchy. The moralising strikes me as an attempt to deny horrible truths about our species by ‘bien-pensant’ liberals.
This story is a case in point because the charge sheet is not only one of viciousness by Ungern-Sternberg (or indeed of the Bolsheviks) but by his lieutenants and – which will surprise many a gentle Californian ‘bien-pensant’ – the poverty stricken Buddhist cultures of the steppe.
Ungern-Sternberg’s ostensible boss in the region, his friend Semenov, was really just a louche pleasure-loving gangster with no interest in ideology or cruelty for its own sake.
A night in Semenov's harem coach must have been fun and it is interesting that our cruel anti-hero seems to have had no interest in sex at all. Beware politicians and soldiers with no interest in sexual play ...
Semenov was the type of the self-seeking opportunistic gangster warlord that emerged as order collapsed (thanks, in great part, to Western incursions) in China and Russia, from Siberia through Manchuria and into China proper, in the early 1920s.
This was what threatened Russia briefly in the early 1990s when the Soviet system collapsed and this should be remembered by Western liberal critics of Putin. There is a history to his re-assertion of order. Ordinary people are never are served by any sudden collapse in state authority.
But, around Ungern-Sternberg, were men of such sadistic cruelty, that they would be fair warning of the type who would emerge again within the SS and the Bolshevik Secret Police, in the security services of the Post-War World and who once existed in the penal and slavery systems of the West.
The excesses of these people, recounted by Palmer (who allows for exaggerations by their captors and those who write history) are supposed, conventionally, to shock us (I won’t reveal their cruelties here) but they should not. This is us – humanity – under certain conditions of power.
This less charitable view of the human condition under conditions of warlord anarchy and war can be matched by a similar view under conditions of poverty. The excesses of Whites and Reds (and there were good men on both sides) come down to a desperate struggle in chaos and poverty for survival.
The book is extremely good on the political reality of Buddhism – feudal, corrupt, murderous, filled with obscurantism, deeply exploitative of the population, opportunistic over the acquisition and maintenance of power.
Buddhism is certainly not unique in this and there were many good and ‘holy’ monks but this practical reality of the role of organised religion under conditions of feudal poverty explains the reasonable claims of Communists to be progressive in their invasions of such countries.
This is not to say that Communist slaughter of the monks and despoliation of their treasures were not extreme acts equal to those of the Taliban at Bamiyan but that there was a long history to these acts that Western liberals would do well to consider as explanation though not justification.
Above all, the ‘fluffy’ approach to Buddhism that extends a serious religious practice that is extremely demanding and has great truths to offer into silly sexual play, romantic idealism around the cuddly Dalai Lama and a cod eco-internationalism could do with some lessons in history.
This book is worth reading alone for opening our eyes to what organised religion often really is all about in very poor societies – maintaining order through a pact with nobles to exploit the population and using surplus capital for ostentatious display to assert their ‘spiritual’ authority.
Mongolia during the extremely short and brutal period of Ungern-Sternberg’s attempt to create the base for a new Mongolian Empire was a cesspit of cruelty, exploitation and obscurantism and the Mongolians, like all peoples, deserved better.
Palmer also shows how Ungern-Sternberg foreshadowed the Nazis in their thinking and this should not be a surprise in the context of the day.
The neurotic ideology of the Baltic Russo-Germans were part of a more general Slavic intellectual irrationalism that resulted in the useful and poisonous ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ but the intellectual climate was not, in Russia, so much one of nationalism as monarchic traditionalism.
This is a complex issue that is not the core subject of the book and should not be essayed here but understanding it involves understanding how modernisation disrupted exploitative agrarian economies in Eastern Europe and Russia and the role that Jews as traders and intellectuals played in that.
Any analysis must take into account the self-identity of an aristocratic class that genuinely considered itself innately rather than contingently superior, much as Western imperialists came to think of themselves as innately superior to people with different coloured skins and cultures.
Palmer is right to present Ungern-Sternberg in Mongolia as, in effect, a testing ground for reaction to modernisation.
National socialist Germany (under Hitler rather than other national socialists) created a perfect opportunity to express the revolt against modernisation in modernising terms as a technologically-based attempt to seize empire in the Western manner and crush the modernisers.
The Baltic German elite, once their world had been crushed and defeated by Communism, became vectors of resentment and revenge against both Bolshevism and Jewry with an ideology of restored aristocracy but for race and Fuhrer rather than failed Tsar.
Like so many dangerous forces within state and empires, they came from the margins and, having failed in one project, merely transferred to another and refined their cruelties into what would later become a system of organised extermination. This is the world of Alfred Rosenberg.
A recommended book not for its ostensible subject – a rather interesting unhinged but nasty and dim-witted minor aristocrat let loose under anarchic conditions – but for what the adventures of such a man tell us about humanity and society as old worlds crumble and new world are born.
We are in the midst of such a period now. An old world is crumbling and a new world is being born and we have to watch out for ourselves as the solutions being offered to us swing between tyranny and anarchy, giving opportunities to men like Ungern-Sternberg to express themselves in blood.
August 6, 2016
You’ve probably never heard of the Baron Ungern-Sternberg. I came across a passing reference of him while reading The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism last year: something about him claiming to be a reincarnation of Genghis Khan, declaring that he would kill every Jew in Russia, making human torches out of his victims and vowing to make an avenue of gallows from Siberia to Europe.
My interest thus piqued, I looked for a biography of this guy and came across this. Palmer give us a good portrait of a delusional psychopath and aristocratic misfit that failed at everything he tried until he found his true calling: warfare and genocide on the most colossal and bizarre scale possible. Sternberg also kept wolves in his house. Once, he paused in the middle of a hostile city during a reconnaissance mission to berate an enemy sentry for falling asleep on duty.
Perhaps fittingly, many of Sternberg’s ancestors had backgrounds as unsavory as him. Otto von Ungern-Sternberg (1744-1811) was a “wrecker”; he used false lights to lure ships onto the harsh rocks of Hiiumaa island, then killed the surviving crew and plundered the cargo. It seems that the Baron was a worthy successor.
When the Russian Civil War broke out, it was characterized by a depraved frenzy of daily atrocities by the Reds and the equally fanatical Whites. This environment suited Sternberg perfectly, and gave him a chance to distinguish himself as he sought to outdo everybody at how extensive and brutal atrocities could get. He went to Mongolia, hoping to lead an army of east Asians against Moscow. His ultimate objective was to re-establish the rule of the tsar in Russia, impose a monarchy on China, and re-create a Mongolian empire. As contradictory and muddled as those goals were, Sternberg was apparently less concerned about his military objectives than he was with his penchant for genocidal warfare. He eventually did conquer Mongolia in a bloody campaign against the Chinese. Following his victory, the Baron turned the place into a giant execution ground.
Of course, Sternberg, and the rest of the Whites with whom he was at least vaguely affiliated, never had a realistic chance of destroying the Bolsheviks. After his rather insane ploy to march on Moscow, the Red Army eventually ousted Sternberg, “liberated” Mongolia, and then proceeded to commit atrocities on a colossal scale, as if trying to outdo Sternberg at his own work. Sternberg was captured. The Bolsheviks put him on trial for war crimes (hypocritically enough). When asked whether he often beat people, he replied, “not enough.” Sternberg was executed immediately after the trial. Sternberg had once consulted a soothsayer who told him he had 130 days to live. Coincidentally, Sternberg was captured and executed exactly 130 days after he was told this. The Red Army occupied Mongolia, which became the first Soviet satellite state. In some cases, incredibly enough, Sternberg was still worshipped as a god in that area as late as the 1970s.
Sternberg claimed to be a Buddhist; he was also fanatically anti-Semitic. Somehow he managed to turn this into a philosophy that made some people think he was a god. His ideology was a curious, vaguely defined mix of racial supremacy, occult mysticism, and absolute megalomania. In Mongolia, Sternberg wrote, “I tried to form the Order of Military Buddhists for an uncompromising fight against the depravity of revolution.” The order permitted unlimited vodka and drugs, but total renunciation of women, a restriction that was ignored.
One error did puzzle me. Palmer mentions the White warlord Kolchak as having formed a government in 1917; it was actually 1918. He also writes that Wrangel evacuated the Crimea in November 1919; it was actually 1920. Palmer also writes on page 80 that “The Winter Palace, symbolic heart of government, was seized by a tiny band of revolutionaries, led by Lenin, freshly returned from German exile.” This is inaccurate. Lenin had been in Zurich, Switzerland at first, and then had to cross German lines to get to Russia. The Germans then let Lenin’s band travel via Frankfurt, Berlin, and Stockholm to Petrograd.
The book itself is a bit dry, even though the story is an unbelievable tale of epic proportions, and a revealing look into a seemingly totally deranged time period. Sternberg is the kind of man that makes communism look good.
My interest thus piqued, I looked for a biography of this guy and came across this. Palmer give us a good portrait of a delusional psychopath and aristocratic misfit that failed at everything he tried until he found his true calling: warfare and genocide on the most colossal and bizarre scale possible. Sternberg also kept wolves in his house. Once, he paused in the middle of a hostile city during a reconnaissance mission to berate an enemy sentry for falling asleep on duty.
Perhaps fittingly, many of Sternberg’s ancestors had backgrounds as unsavory as him. Otto von Ungern-Sternberg (1744-1811) was a “wrecker”; he used false lights to lure ships onto the harsh rocks of Hiiumaa island, then killed the surviving crew and plundered the cargo. It seems that the Baron was a worthy successor.
When the Russian Civil War broke out, it was characterized by a depraved frenzy of daily atrocities by the Reds and the equally fanatical Whites. This environment suited Sternberg perfectly, and gave him a chance to distinguish himself as he sought to outdo everybody at how extensive and brutal atrocities could get. He went to Mongolia, hoping to lead an army of east Asians against Moscow. His ultimate objective was to re-establish the rule of the tsar in Russia, impose a monarchy on China, and re-create a Mongolian empire. As contradictory and muddled as those goals were, Sternberg was apparently less concerned about his military objectives than he was with his penchant for genocidal warfare. He eventually did conquer Mongolia in a bloody campaign against the Chinese. Following his victory, the Baron turned the place into a giant execution ground.
Of course, Sternberg, and the rest of the Whites with whom he was at least vaguely affiliated, never had a realistic chance of destroying the Bolsheviks. After his rather insane ploy to march on Moscow, the Red Army eventually ousted Sternberg, “liberated” Mongolia, and then proceeded to commit atrocities on a colossal scale, as if trying to outdo Sternberg at his own work. Sternberg was captured. The Bolsheviks put him on trial for war crimes (hypocritically enough). When asked whether he often beat people, he replied, “not enough.” Sternberg was executed immediately after the trial. Sternberg had once consulted a soothsayer who told him he had 130 days to live. Coincidentally, Sternberg was captured and executed exactly 130 days after he was told this. The Red Army occupied Mongolia, which became the first Soviet satellite state. In some cases, incredibly enough, Sternberg was still worshipped as a god in that area as late as the 1970s.
Sternberg claimed to be a Buddhist; he was also fanatically anti-Semitic. Somehow he managed to turn this into a philosophy that made some people think he was a god. His ideology was a curious, vaguely defined mix of racial supremacy, occult mysticism, and absolute megalomania. In Mongolia, Sternberg wrote, “I tried to form the Order of Military Buddhists for an uncompromising fight against the depravity of revolution.” The order permitted unlimited vodka and drugs, but total renunciation of women, a restriction that was ignored.
One error did puzzle me. Palmer mentions the White warlord Kolchak as having formed a government in 1917; it was actually 1918. He also writes that Wrangel evacuated the Crimea in November 1919; it was actually 1920. Palmer also writes on page 80 that “The Winter Palace, symbolic heart of government, was seized by a tiny band of revolutionaries, led by Lenin, freshly returned from German exile.” This is inaccurate. Lenin had been in Zurich, Switzerland at first, and then had to cross German lines to get to Russia. The Germans then let Lenin’s band travel via Frankfurt, Berlin, and Stockholm to Petrograd.
The book itself is a bit dry, even though the story is an unbelievable tale of epic proportions, and a revealing look into a seemingly totally deranged time period. Sternberg is the kind of man that makes communism look good.
December 29, 2022
Palmer manages the almost impossible feat of making The Baron's life boring, and told in a very political correct way.
July 5, 2022
What a waste of a fascinating subject. Poorly researched, endless tangents and overall sloppy. The author even mistranslates Russian words and expressions so poorly that the meaning changes. Mr. Ungern-Stenberg may or may not have been a horrible person but from an objective historical perspective from a biographer he deserves much better. Huge disappointment.
November 29, 2022
An interesting and gruesome tale of one of the most notorious actors of the Russian Civil war, but ultimately not all that helpful in explaining the relevant broad historical themes.
January 5, 2019
A book which is superficially very informative and effective, but which is in fact riddled with errors, and the work of a writer not remotely familiar with the subject. (Cf this document by an expert in the field which fairly demolishes this work.)
One must presume that the glowing reviews the book has received are the result of litterateur types who value "creative nonfiction" or adjacent books- even a nonfiction book about a violent petty warlord- not for what they can teach them about history or science or any other subject, but for the range of emotions the book can excite in the reader, or for the quality or elegance of the prose, etc; they won't remember any of the facts, accurate or not, given in the book within a month of having read it, but they'll remember it as a fun roller coaster ride and recommend it based on that vague impression.
One must presume that the glowing reviews the book has received are the result of litterateur types who value "creative nonfiction" or adjacent books- even a nonfiction book about a violent petty warlord- not for what they can teach them about history or science or any other subject, but for the range of emotions the book can excite in the reader, or for the quality or elegance of the prose, etc; they won't remember any of the facts, accurate or not, given in the book within a month of having read it, but they'll remember it as a fun roller coaster ride and recommend it based on that vague impression.
February 23, 2016
“The Bloody White Baron” is one of those fascinating short books about a nasty little corner of the world during a nasty time. The nasty little corner of the world is Mongolia; the nasty time is the Russian Civil War. The eponymous Baron is Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg, of Estonian/German extraction, who was called the last khan of Mongolia and waged a brutal, doomed minor campaign against the Chinese and the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s. Naturally, he came to a bad end.
The backdrop to all this is the Russian Civil War in eastern Siberia. Figures such as Alexander Kolchak and Grigory Semenov pop up as background players to Ungern’s little campaign. (Interestingly, the tenuous relationships of such men with Ungern highlight one of the White Russians’ biggest failures—the inability to unite among themselves). Palmer is an excellent writer, and he makes all these characters come alive.
The book covers mostly 1920 and 1921. Ungern wanted to put Michael, the brother of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, on the throne, which would have been difficult, considering the Bolsheviks had murdered him three years before. But as far as Ungern was concerned, “Monarchy was the only right way to order the people, and they ought to long for it. If they didn’t, they had been corrupted and would have to be punished.” So Ungern went back and forth over Mongolia, raising and losing a small polyglot army, and using it in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to drive out both the Chinese and the Bolsheviks (who both saw Mongolia as a place to extend their power).
One of the most interesting takeaways from the book is the author’s clear-eyed treatment of Buddhism. Palmer talks a lot about Mongolian Buddhism, which is essentially the same as Tibetan Buddhism. He talks about it in general, and but also about how it affected Ungern’s thinking, and about how it played into, and in many ways drove, the actions of many of those interacting with Ungern. Palmer, who has traveled extensively in Mongolia and speaks the language, doesn’t sugarcoat the religion. Most religions don’t get the sugarcoating treatment nowadays, but usually Buddhism does. Vacuous Hollywood stars purport to be Buddhist and tell us that Buddhism is a wonderful way of spirituality, lacking in silly things like doctrines, gods and required behaviors. This is reinforced by various dubious writings. For example, the pseudo-scholarly book by Stephen Prothero, “God Is Not One,” discussing the world’s religions, gives much the same treatment to Buddhism as movie stars do (when it’s not busy blaming all the world’s problems on Christianity and offering cut-rate Muslim apologetics). Palmer, merely in the service of providing color and background to his story, gives a much more accurate portrayal of Buddhism.
So, Palmer notes that “Many writers ignorant of Asian history—particularly, for some reason, anti-religious science writers—also claim that Buddhism lacked the history of atrocities and intolerance that marked Western religion, despite, for instance, the many Buddhist-inspired messianic revolts in China, or the deep complicity of Zen Buddhism in Japanese militarism during the Second World War.” And, “Buddhists are often portrayed in the West as not believing in a God or gods, and most Western Buddhists don’t. The vast majority of Buddhists worldwide, however, are enthusiastic believers in all manners of gods and spirits.”
The reality is that much Buddhism is a spirit-soaked religion, full of belief in magic and demons, frequently extremely violent and intolerant, with nothing of the Golden Rule or any other Christian-inspired belief that is central to the West’s shared morality. (Palmer notes, though, that Chinese Buddhism is more focused on “mercy and release from the wheel of suffering” than Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism, thus conforming somewhat more to Western stereotype.) Buddhist temples contain “lurid images of the gods . . . severed heads and flayed skins, desecrated corpses blossoming into gardens of blood . . . .” And many important Buddhist figures, including incarnations of various Dalai Lamas and other leading lamas, such as the Bogd Khan (aka the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, the third-most important lama in Tibetan Buddhism and a major player in Ungern’s activities), were drunken sexual perverts desperate for power and material goods.
Palmer doesn’t note these real Buddhist characteristics just to add flavor, though. His point is that a culture soaked in this type of violence, with a belief in prophecies, demons and spirits, was not only willing but ecstatic to take as a “White God,” the “God of War,” a failed Russian army officer who promised to restore the Mongolian nation to the glory of Genghis Khan, and also to accept his horrendous brutality without comment or complaint. Ungern was like a Buddhist real-life Hieronymus Bosch: “[Ungern’s] ideas [of punishment] come straight from the Buddhist hells, of which there are a great variety, with numerous punishments for each sin. All of Ungern’s favorite tortures were prominent in the hell scrolls of the Mongolian monasteries: exposure on the ice, burning alive, rending by wild beasts.” (Palmer also has funny statements in this context, like “Looking for a [specific] ‘god of war’ in the eclectic Mongolian pantheon is like looking for a virgin martyr among Catholic saints.”)
Ungern himself was a complex religious figure. Theoretically he was Lutheran. But he had strong Russian Orthodox leanings, too, doubtless because of the link between Russian monarchism and Orthodoxy. He liked theosophy (perhaps he would have gotten along well with noted Democratic icon and crypto-Communist, Henry Wallace, who was forced out in favor of Harry Truman as Vice President for FDR’s last term, not because he was basically a Communist, but because he was humiliatingly taken in by a theosophist con-man). And, what Ungern really wanted from religion was to confirm his messianic view of himself. Really, Ungern was a mostly tolerant syncretist—he didn’t care what religion you followed, as long as you shared his messianic views, and (of course, he being Russian) Jews were not allowed. He wasn’t racist, either —he thought Asians superior to whites—though, of course, he thought any noble person superior to peasants.
My only complaint about the book is that there are literally no pictures. This must be for money/copyright reasons. Palmer frequently describes pictures in details, presumably to make up for the lack—so the pictures exist. But that just calls attention to the lack of pictures, and to coin a phrase, a picture is worth a thousand words. This really reduces the impact of the book—just a few pictures would have been invaluable. Nonetheless, Palmer’s writing mostly makes up for the lack, and the book is well worth reading.
The backdrop to all this is the Russian Civil War in eastern Siberia. Figures such as Alexander Kolchak and Grigory Semenov pop up as background players to Ungern’s little campaign. (Interestingly, the tenuous relationships of such men with Ungern highlight one of the White Russians’ biggest failures—the inability to unite among themselves). Palmer is an excellent writer, and he makes all these characters come alive.
The book covers mostly 1920 and 1921. Ungern wanted to put Michael, the brother of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, on the throne, which would have been difficult, considering the Bolsheviks had murdered him three years before. But as far as Ungern was concerned, “Monarchy was the only right way to order the people, and they ought to long for it. If they didn’t, they had been corrupted and would have to be punished.” So Ungern went back and forth over Mongolia, raising and losing a small polyglot army, and using it in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to drive out both the Chinese and the Bolsheviks (who both saw Mongolia as a place to extend their power).
One of the most interesting takeaways from the book is the author’s clear-eyed treatment of Buddhism. Palmer talks a lot about Mongolian Buddhism, which is essentially the same as Tibetan Buddhism. He talks about it in general, and but also about how it affected Ungern’s thinking, and about how it played into, and in many ways drove, the actions of many of those interacting with Ungern. Palmer, who has traveled extensively in Mongolia and speaks the language, doesn’t sugarcoat the religion. Most religions don’t get the sugarcoating treatment nowadays, but usually Buddhism does. Vacuous Hollywood stars purport to be Buddhist and tell us that Buddhism is a wonderful way of spirituality, lacking in silly things like doctrines, gods and required behaviors. This is reinforced by various dubious writings. For example, the pseudo-scholarly book by Stephen Prothero, “God Is Not One,” discussing the world’s religions, gives much the same treatment to Buddhism as movie stars do (when it’s not busy blaming all the world’s problems on Christianity and offering cut-rate Muslim apologetics). Palmer, merely in the service of providing color and background to his story, gives a much more accurate portrayal of Buddhism.
So, Palmer notes that “Many writers ignorant of Asian history—particularly, for some reason, anti-religious science writers—also claim that Buddhism lacked the history of atrocities and intolerance that marked Western religion, despite, for instance, the many Buddhist-inspired messianic revolts in China, or the deep complicity of Zen Buddhism in Japanese militarism during the Second World War.” And, “Buddhists are often portrayed in the West as not believing in a God or gods, and most Western Buddhists don’t. The vast majority of Buddhists worldwide, however, are enthusiastic believers in all manners of gods and spirits.”
The reality is that much Buddhism is a spirit-soaked religion, full of belief in magic and demons, frequently extremely violent and intolerant, with nothing of the Golden Rule or any other Christian-inspired belief that is central to the West’s shared morality. (Palmer notes, though, that Chinese Buddhism is more focused on “mercy and release from the wheel of suffering” than Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism, thus conforming somewhat more to Western stereotype.) Buddhist temples contain “lurid images of the gods . . . severed heads and flayed skins, desecrated corpses blossoming into gardens of blood . . . .” And many important Buddhist figures, including incarnations of various Dalai Lamas and other leading lamas, such as the Bogd Khan (aka the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, the third-most important lama in Tibetan Buddhism and a major player in Ungern’s activities), were drunken sexual perverts desperate for power and material goods.
Palmer doesn’t note these real Buddhist characteristics just to add flavor, though. His point is that a culture soaked in this type of violence, with a belief in prophecies, demons and spirits, was not only willing but ecstatic to take as a “White God,” the “God of War,” a failed Russian army officer who promised to restore the Mongolian nation to the glory of Genghis Khan, and also to accept his horrendous brutality without comment or complaint. Ungern was like a Buddhist real-life Hieronymus Bosch: “[Ungern’s] ideas [of punishment] come straight from the Buddhist hells, of which there are a great variety, with numerous punishments for each sin. All of Ungern’s favorite tortures were prominent in the hell scrolls of the Mongolian monasteries: exposure on the ice, burning alive, rending by wild beasts.” (Palmer also has funny statements in this context, like “Looking for a [specific] ‘god of war’ in the eclectic Mongolian pantheon is like looking for a virgin martyr among Catholic saints.”)
Ungern himself was a complex religious figure. Theoretically he was Lutheran. But he had strong Russian Orthodox leanings, too, doubtless because of the link between Russian monarchism and Orthodoxy. He liked theosophy (perhaps he would have gotten along well with noted Democratic icon and crypto-Communist, Henry Wallace, who was forced out in favor of Harry Truman as Vice President for FDR’s last term, not because he was basically a Communist, but because he was humiliatingly taken in by a theosophist con-man). And, what Ungern really wanted from religion was to confirm his messianic view of himself. Really, Ungern was a mostly tolerant syncretist—he didn’t care what religion you followed, as long as you shared his messianic views, and (of course, he being Russian) Jews were not allowed. He wasn’t racist, either —he thought Asians superior to whites—though, of course, he thought any noble person superior to peasants.
My only complaint about the book is that there are literally no pictures. This must be for money/copyright reasons. Palmer frequently describes pictures in details, presumably to make up for the lack—so the pictures exist. But that just calls attention to the lack of pictures, and to coin a phrase, a picture is worth a thousand words. This really reduces the impact of the book—just a few pictures would have been invaluable. Nonetheless, Palmer’s writing mostly makes up for the lack, and the book is well worth reading.
March 13, 2021
“In the history of the modern world, there have been few characters more sadistic, sinister, and deeply demented than Baron Ungern-Sternberg.” So says the author, James Palmer, and he proves his point. Anybody who thinks that humans are inherently good and only made evil needs to read this book. Nikolai Roman Maximilian Ungern-Sternberg, the main character, somehow managed to combine all the worst that the 20th Century had to offer. He was an aristocratic anti-Semite, a murderer and torturer. And, he ruled Mongolia for five months in 1921. It is an extraordinary story.
I don’t want to ruin the book, so I will briefly introduce Ungern-Sterberg in a paragraph. He was a German-Russian aristocrat, born in 1885. From a young age, he exhibited the bad manners, cruelty and obstinacy that marked him for the rest of his life, managing to get himself kicked out of school and the Naval Academy. He served as a common soldier in the Russo-Japanese War, then got into the Army academy, and served as an officer in the Russian Army near the Mongolian and Manchurian border, where he learned life as a cavalry officer, Buddhism, and the customs of the people there. He had got himself kicked out of the army when the First World War intervened, where he served with distinction. When Russia surrendered in 1917, he joined the White forces against the Revolution in the Far East, where he had formerly been stationed. He rose to command a key junction there, where he acquitted himself with both bravery and cruelty, running the White death camp. When the Bosheviks closed in in 1920, he decamped with a ragtag cavalry army of about 2500, consisting of Russians, Cossacks, Mongolians, Tibetans, Japanese and others, and invaded Mongolia, where he rescued the head monk from the Chinese, was hailed by the Mongolian people as a Buddhist reincarnation and god of war, and took and held the capital city. He led a brutal, anti-Semetic, cruel regime, and was eventually deposed by a Russian army in 1921. He was captured and executed.
The story is told by the author, James Palmer, with a great eye for detail, with forays into Mongolian Buddhism, Buddhist politics, Russian occultism and anti-Semitism, and the chaos of Siberia during the Red-White war. There are Americans, Czechs and Japanese. There are cavalry charges, massacres, looting, and starvation. Like any good history book, the author opens up a window into an unknown place and time. You can’t learn everything, but you can learn something, and Palmer makes that a very interesting something indeed. Entertaining, engaging writing, and you can be very sure that you are extremely lucky to not have lived through it. The reader will be helped by a basic understanding of Asian 20th Century history, but it is not necessary.
Ungern-Sternberg was a Nazi before Nazis were a thing. He kept wolves in his house and married a Chinese princess. He styled himself as, and was accepted by many Mongolian people themselves as, a 20th Century Ghenggis Khan, and that was his plan, to lead a Mongolian cavalry for the causes of monarchy, aristocracy, and tradition against the polluting influences of modernity, as variously conceived of as Bolshevism, liberalism, tolerance, and democracy. Thankfully, he didn’t succeed.
I don’t want to ruin the book, so I will briefly introduce Ungern-Sterberg in a paragraph. He was a German-Russian aristocrat, born in 1885. From a young age, he exhibited the bad manners, cruelty and obstinacy that marked him for the rest of his life, managing to get himself kicked out of school and the Naval Academy. He served as a common soldier in the Russo-Japanese War, then got into the Army academy, and served as an officer in the Russian Army near the Mongolian and Manchurian border, where he learned life as a cavalry officer, Buddhism, and the customs of the people there. He had got himself kicked out of the army when the First World War intervened, where he served with distinction. When Russia surrendered in 1917, he joined the White forces against the Revolution in the Far East, where he had formerly been stationed. He rose to command a key junction there, where he acquitted himself with both bravery and cruelty, running the White death camp. When the Bosheviks closed in in 1920, he decamped with a ragtag cavalry army of about 2500, consisting of Russians, Cossacks, Mongolians, Tibetans, Japanese and others, and invaded Mongolia, where he rescued the head monk from the Chinese, was hailed by the Mongolian people as a Buddhist reincarnation and god of war, and took and held the capital city. He led a brutal, anti-Semetic, cruel regime, and was eventually deposed by a Russian army in 1921. He was captured and executed.
The story is told by the author, James Palmer, with a great eye for detail, with forays into Mongolian Buddhism, Buddhist politics, Russian occultism and anti-Semitism, and the chaos of Siberia during the Red-White war. There are Americans, Czechs and Japanese. There are cavalry charges, massacres, looting, and starvation. Like any good history book, the author opens up a window into an unknown place and time. You can’t learn everything, but you can learn something, and Palmer makes that a very interesting something indeed. Entertaining, engaging writing, and you can be very sure that you are extremely lucky to not have lived through it. The reader will be helped by a basic understanding of Asian 20th Century history, but it is not necessary.
Ungern-Sternberg was a Nazi before Nazis were a thing. He kept wolves in his house and married a Chinese princess. He styled himself as, and was accepted by many Mongolian people themselves as, a 20th Century Ghenggis Khan, and that was his plan, to lead a Mongolian cavalry for the causes of monarchy, aristocracy, and tradition against the polluting influences of modernity, as variously conceived of as Bolshevism, liberalism, tolerance, and democracy. Thankfully, he didn’t succeed.
December 21, 2011
Not quite what I expected. I thought this would be a biography of the Russian aristocrat (Baron Ungern-Sternberg) who would be the savior of Mongolia, the spiritual and military reincarnation of Genghis Khan. Maybe combined with a history of Mongolia in the post-Russian revolution period. It was a little of both of these, but much more of a military history of the White (anti-communist) Russians and Baron Ungern’s various battles, which just isn’t that interesting. The Baron seems to have been quite disturbed--delusions of becoming the next Khan, saving Mongolia and defeating the Communists. He was also terrifically anti-Semitic and a bloody sadist. It seems there could be a great story here, but the writer isn’t up to telling a coherent story. The battles are confusingly told and the Baron doesn’t really become a full blooded character for some reason. Lots of editorializing on the author's part, which isn't bad in general, but in a history I expect more objectivity, otherwise the whole book is thrown into doubt. I couldn’t recommend this, but the story would make a good movie. And, this publisher commits a cardinal sign. The book is full of misspelled words, typos and format errors. I really think this is inexcusable and automatically loses one star, regardless of how good a book might otherwise be.
September 23, 2010
I first read about Ungern-Sternberg in Peter Hopkirk's account of the Russian Civil War in Central Asia ("Setting the East Ablaze"), and I couldn't imagine why the Baron's story hadn't been filmed. It has everything--- armoured trains, ragtag armies moving across the steppe like something out of "Road Warrior", Mongol horsemen, Japanese mercenaries, eerie shamanic rituals, and a central figure whose madness and cruelty are...well, breathtaking. Ungern-Sternberg's story is a kind of dark, dark comedy in the Grand Guignol mode, a surreal sideshow to the already brutal and horrific Russian Civil War in the East.
I'll fault James Palmer for a few things--- continually using "Nikolas II" for the last tsar instead of the standard "Nicholas" or the Russian "Nikolai", and for long, rambling disquisitions on why he dislikes Buddhism. But the story itself is a horror comedy that needs a major film, and "The Bloody White Baron" is very much worth reading...if you have a taste for surrealist nightmare.
I'll fault James Palmer for a few things--- continually using "Nikolas II" for the last tsar instead of the standard "Nicholas" or the Russian "Nikolai", and for long, rambling disquisitions on why he dislikes Buddhism. But the story itself is a horror comedy that needs a major film, and "The Bloody White Baron" is very much worth reading...if you have a taste for surrealist nightmare.
August 7, 2013
I read this before, but its such a real life 'Heart of Darkness/Apocaypse Now' in the Russian Civil War that I had to read it again. Still amazing. A meditation on all that far right/occultist merger stuff that today exists largely in center-left homeopathic whole foods shopper form. The Baron was a genuine madman with power, and thus its s true case study in when the insane may do as they please.
May 1, 2023
A visionary, a crusader, a brutal tyrant. He had a very interesting assessment of global politics and the revolutionary times he was immersed in.
He was right about everything.
I will say nothing more.
He was right about everything.
I will say nothing more.
March 10, 2021
What a complete character, Freiherr Roman Ungern-von Sternberg. The God of War of Mongolia, dressed in dilapidated Mongolian yellow robe, with his Cross of St. George on the lapel. A character of such strict, aggressive and angular mind that the world around him simply buckled at its knees.
Become leader of the Mongolian cavalry division? Check
Save the god-king of Mongolia from the Chinese? Check
Keep wolves in your attic? Check
Travel entire year by yourself, only armed with hunting rifle and a horse, ranging for means of survival in Siberian and Mongolian wilds? Check
Be so supremely, autistically anachronistic that you will never, ever accept the fact that cavalry is very dated military technology after WW1? Check
Still worshiped three generations on as the White savior from the north, the prophesized man who would save Buddhism, riding on a pale horse? Checkaroni
What breeding can produce in Man is truly awe-inspiring. This specimen is extremely unique. There is something of Jungean syncronicity in the life of the Baron: he is a exemplar where the narrative and objective worlds collide (and where the narrative world, at least initially, seems to dominate the terms of the objective world).
The work was great as a character study, all in all. Palmer grudgingly respects some facets of the Baron, which is good. Comparisons are made with the brutality engaged by the Chinese and Red armies. There is a personal touch in Palmer's work which I enjoy - it is clear he travelled to Mongolia (more than once?) to research the book.
I would highly recommend, just for the superb story-telling
Become leader of the Mongolian cavalry division? Check
Save the god-king of Mongolia from the Chinese? Check
Keep wolves in your attic? Check
Travel entire year by yourself, only armed with hunting rifle and a horse, ranging for means of survival in Siberian and Mongolian wilds? Check
Be so supremely, autistically anachronistic that you will never, ever accept the fact that cavalry is very dated military technology after WW1? Check
Still worshiped three generations on as the White savior from the north, the prophesized man who would save Buddhism, riding on a pale horse? Checkaroni
What breeding can produce in Man is truly awe-inspiring. This specimen is extremely unique. There is something of Jungean syncronicity in the life of the Baron: he is a exemplar where the narrative and objective worlds collide (and where the narrative world, at least initially, seems to dominate the terms of the objective world).
The work was great as a character study, all in all. Palmer grudgingly respects some facets of the Baron, which is good. Comparisons are made with the brutality engaged by the Chinese and Red armies. There is a personal touch in Palmer's work which I enjoy - it is clear he travelled to Mongolia (more than once?) to research the book.
I would highly recommend, just for the superb story-telling
October 22, 2016
A remarkable read about one of history's most bizarre characters -- a Russian nobleman from Estonia with a Jewish name who was apparently a Buddhist religious fanatic, seen as a reincarnation of Genghis Khan and, most startlingly, bulletproof. The author, who apparently hangs out pretty close to where this story unfolded, pulls together a tremendous number of sources written in different languages and with different levels of attention to accuracy, and puts it all in one place for you. Curiously, he didn't give that much attention to the main character's cruelties or the other odd features of his personality; he focuses more of the legends that spun off from the reality. Written in a light, ironic tone that continues to the last page of endnotes, which are worth reading -- not quite as funny as Will Cuppy's, but close. Large bibliography in the back makes me want to read everything listed in it.
Read
March 28, 2014A good yarn, about an excellently demented, and extremely brutal corner of 20th century history. The Baron is a weird enough character and Palmer makes a seemingly honest attempt to get to the bottom of his personality and ideology, but this strikes me as the less interesting aspect of the book (as well as being a hopeless cause.) The history of the events themselves is more striking. From the dramatically named baroque killer train of the Russian civil war, which roamed Siberia, complete with banqueting halls, torture chambers and ransacked naval artillery. The Tibetan brigade that wandered around Mongolia trying to find the Mongolian army. The political wrangling between the Chinese and Russians in Mongolia...it's all just a nice reminder that history is a lot odder, less sensible, less linearly reasonable than it seems from a distance.
Want to read
February 15, 2010This isn't a bad book, in fact, some of it is terribly interesting. But after a week of reading I am still only on page 105, I keep reading a page or two and then setting it aside and picking up other things. I guess it's just not doing it for me right now. I'll get back to it.
January 11, 2023
This book is a testament to why we should all be afraid of Weeaboos.
Yes, you read that right. Weeaboos. Weebs. Otakus. Demon-possessed anime fans, or whatever you like to call them. Yes, we all need to fear the weebs. For this book describes the horrifying yet fascinating true history of a megalomaniacal weeaboo who went off the rails, killing thousands of people in the process. And yes, I do understand that “Weeaboo” typically refers to those who are obsessed with Japanese culture in particular, and Baron Ungern, the subject of this book, was obsessed with Mongolian culture instead. But he’s still a weeb, just for Mongolia instead of Japan. Any white boy who converts to Buddhism, invades Mongolia, and then proclaims himself to be the reincarnation of Genghis Khan is a weeb, and these are all things that Baron Ungern did without a shred of irony.
As you may have gleaned, Ungern or “The Bloody White Baron” as he is so ominously referred to, is the focus of this gruesome little biography. And by GOD is this man a basket case. James Palmer follows Ungern from the early days of his childhood, and the picture is grim from early on.
Our young villain is born to a family of Germanic/Russian noblemen in Lithuania. Ungern’s family happens to claim descent from a infamously bloodthirsty class of Crusader knights, who slaughtered the native Lithuanians centuries earlier because JEBUS. The young Ungern follows in the footsteps of his thuggish ancestors early in his youth, torturing small animals and showing all the characteristics of a budding serial killer. But Ungern was far worse than any old demented schmuck running amok in those days, because he was RICH. Ungern’s loaded family raises their son with a healthy dose of entitlement and a superiority complex larger than the moon. And these traits, combined with his own batshit-insane tendencies, cause Ungern to get himself expelled from several prestigious schools and military academies. Rich, entitled, and violent, Ungern self-sabotages every chance he has to be a normal, functioning, Russian citizen like some sort of demented frat boy. In the midst of his youthful delinquency, the Russian Revolution occurs, the Tsar is murdered, and the Bolsheviks take over Russia.
And this is where things get real crazy.
The young, directionless Ungern is shocked by the Bolshevik revolution. He, as a nobleman, is targeted at every turn. He can’t find work, can’t go to war, can’t do anything. Communism sucks, he thinks. And with this hot take, Ungern turns to Russian occultism, which exposes him to Tibetan Buddhism and other Eastern religions. Ungern turns to Buddhism for solace, and then has a marvelous idea: He is going to invade Mongolia. Yes. He is going to invade Mongolia, because HE is the reincarnation of Genghis Khan, the greatest world leader in all of history (in Ungern’s opinion.) Once the Mongolian steppe peoples have been united under his banner, Ungern plans to build a mighty army, invade Russia and Europe, put the Tsar back on his throne, and rule as the reincarnated Genghis Khan over the historical territory of the Mongol empire of the 1100s.
If this sounds wack to you, it’s because it’s WACK. A serial killer in training begins to idolize Genghis Khan so much that he wants to BE him, and plans to reinstate the Russian monarchy because he hates communism that much. And the scariest part is, this motherfucker was able to complete nearly all of the goals on his agenda.
Ungern flees Russia with a small military force of Tsarist holdouts and makes the long trek to Mongolia. While some Mongolians were unimpressed by the dusty ass Russian weeb who had just appeared on their doorstep, many others welcomed his arrival with great fanfare. For you see, the native Mongolians were currently embroiled in a struggle against China. The Chinese government (which had recently become communist) was attempting to integrate Mongolia, a sort of alley between Russia and China, into the Chinese state. And while the Chinese were winning this battle, the Mongolians were not going down without a fight. They hated the thought of being forced into cultural homogeneity by the Chinese government, who would likely strip them of their religion, social structure, and semi-nomadic way of living. The Mongolians were so desperate to get China off their asses that they were willing to accept any help they could get - even if that help was an army of foreigners commanded by an insane Russian weeb man.
And so begins the worst of the Bloody Baron’s fuckery.
With his small army, Ungern manages to capture several Mongolian towns and cities. With his success, more native Mongolians join the ranks of his army, and in a relatively short time Ungern has control of the Mongolian state in all but name. He manages to manipulate Buddhist spiritual leaders in Mongolia into accepting his absurd claims about being the reincarnated Genghis, and turns his attention to the invading Chinese. During these campaigns, Ungern loses it, or loses whatever little sanity he had to begin with. He inflicts strict punishment on his soldiers. He kills and tortures both enemy troops AND his own men who have pissed him off in some ways. He is violent and begins to kill random people on the whim. And here is where this biography takes off, in all of its gory, blood-soaked infamy.
I won’t spoil the ending of Ungern’s story, you’ll have to read this book to get a taste of this weird ass man. But it’s insane. The only reason nobody has heard of Ungern is practically because he was operating in a time period where tons of other crazy shit was going on: The Bolsheviks, WW1, the end of the Chinese Imperial Dynasty etc. This man’s life and beliefs read like a fever dream. And frustratingly, as James Palmer notes, the lack of personal writings left behind by Ungern makes it incredibly difficult to know whether he truly believed the bullshit he was spouting, or whether he was just manipulating others for power. Do we know whether Ungern truly believed he was Genghis Kahn, or were his claims just a power play, meant to appeal to the nationalism of his Mongolian subjects? We don’t know. But we do know that he killed, raped, and pillaged so much in Mongolia that his second in command, a native Mongolian, jumped ship after witnessing the depths of Ungern’s bloodlust. It is very hard to write about violent, unethical historical figures without inadvertently romanticizing them. James Palmer does an excellent job of showing what a shitty person Ungern was, while also keeping the reader anxiously turning pages to find out what this crazy little man does next.
In conclusion folks, if you want to read about one of the strangest forgotten conquests in history, read this book. Ungern is one of the most bizarre-ass historical figures I have ever encountered, and I read a LOT of history books. This book has it all. The history of Genghis Khan. An angsty frat boy becoming demented and violent. Pro-royalty sentiments and extreme right-wingedness. Blood. Battles. Horrible Tortures. Buddhist spiritual leaders who are scheming and surprisingly bisexual. A crazy weeb king. At this point all you need to add is the kitchen sink. So read this book my friends. And if you know any weebs, keep a close eye on them. They’re out for blood. You never know when one is going to go on an insane vision quest and try to cure their midlife crisis by invading a whole ass country.
Yes, you read that right. Weeaboos. Weebs. Otakus. Demon-possessed anime fans, or whatever you like to call them. Yes, we all need to fear the weebs. For this book describes the horrifying yet fascinating true history of a megalomaniacal weeaboo who went off the rails, killing thousands of people in the process. And yes, I do understand that “Weeaboo” typically refers to those who are obsessed with Japanese culture in particular, and Baron Ungern, the subject of this book, was obsessed with Mongolian culture instead. But he’s still a weeb, just for Mongolia instead of Japan. Any white boy who converts to Buddhism, invades Mongolia, and then proclaims himself to be the reincarnation of Genghis Khan is a weeb, and these are all things that Baron Ungern did without a shred of irony.
As you may have gleaned, Ungern or “The Bloody White Baron” as he is so ominously referred to, is the focus of this gruesome little biography. And by GOD is this man a basket case. James Palmer follows Ungern from the early days of his childhood, and the picture is grim from early on.
Our young villain is born to a family of Germanic/Russian noblemen in Lithuania. Ungern’s family happens to claim descent from a infamously bloodthirsty class of Crusader knights, who slaughtered the native Lithuanians centuries earlier because JEBUS. The young Ungern follows in the footsteps of his thuggish ancestors early in his youth, torturing small animals and showing all the characteristics of a budding serial killer. But Ungern was far worse than any old demented schmuck running amok in those days, because he was RICH. Ungern’s loaded family raises their son with a healthy dose of entitlement and a superiority complex larger than the moon. And these traits, combined with his own batshit-insane tendencies, cause Ungern to get himself expelled from several prestigious schools and military academies. Rich, entitled, and violent, Ungern self-sabotages every chance he has to be a normal, functioning, Russian citizen like some sort of demented frat boy. In the midst of his youthful delinquency, the Russian Revolution occurs, the Tsar is murdered, and the Bolsheviks take over Russia.
And this is where things get real crazy.
The young, directionless Ungern is shocked by the Bolshevik revolution. He, as a nobleman, is targeted at every turn. He can’t find work, can’t go to war, can’t do anything. Communism sucks, he thinks. And with this hot take, Ungern turns to Russian occultism, which exposes him to Tibetan Buddhism and other Eastern religions. Ungern turns to Buddhism for solace, and then has a marvelous idea: He is going to invade Mongolia. Yes. He is going to invade Mongolia, because HE is the reincarnation of Genghis Khan, the greatest world leader in all of history (in Ungern’s opinion.) Once the Mongolian steppe peoples have been united under his banner, Ungern plans to build a mighty army, invade Russia and Europe, put the Tsar back on his throne, and rule as the reincarnated Genghis Khan over the historical territory of the Mongol empire of the 1100s.
If this sounds wack to you, it’s because it’s WACK. A serial killer in training begins to idolize Genghis Khan so much that he wants to BE him, and plans to reinstate the Russian monarchy because he hates communism that much. And the scariest part is, this motherfucker was able to complete nearly all of the goals on his agenda.
Ungern flees Russia with a small military force of Tsarist holdouts and makes the long trek to Mongolia. While some Mongolians were unimpressed by the dusty ass Russian weeb who had just appeared on their doorstep, many others welcomed his arrival with great fanfare. For you see, the native Mongolians were currently embroiled in a struggle against China. The Chinese government (which had recently become communist) was attempting to integrate Mongolia, a sort of alley between Russia and China, into the Chinese state. And while the Chinese were winning this battle, the Mongolians were not going down without a fight. They hated the thought of being forced into cultural homogeneity by the Chinese government, who would likely strip them of their religion, social structure, and semi-nomadic way of living. The Mongolians were so desperate to get China off their asses that they were willing to accept any help they could get - even if that help was an army of foreigners commanded by an insane Russian weeb man.
And so begins the worst of the Bloody Baron’s fuckery.
With his small army, Ungern manages to capture several Mongolian towns and cities. With his success, more native Mongolians join the ranks of his army, and in a relatively short time Ungern has control of the Mongolian state in all but name. He manages to manipulate Buddhist spiritual leaders in Mongolia into accepting his absurd claims about being the reincarnated Genghis, and turns his attention to the invading Chinese. During these campaigns, Ungern loses it, or loses whatever little sanity he had to begin with. He inflicts strict punishment on his soldiers. He kills and tortures both enemy troops AND his own men who have pissed him off in some ways. He is violent and begins to kill random people on the whim. And here is where this biography takes off, in all of its gory, blood-soaked infamy.
I won’t spoil the ending of Ungern’s story, you’ll have to read this book to get a taste of this weird ass man. But it’s insane. The only reason nobody has heard of Ungern is practically because he was operating in a time period where tons of other crazy shit was going on: The Bolsheviks, WW1, the end of the Chinese Imperial Dynasty etc. This man’s life and beliefs read like a fever dream. And frustratingly, as James Palmer notes, the lack of personal writings left behind by Ungern makes it incredibly difficult to know whether he truly believed the bullshit he was spouting, or whether he was just manipulating others for power. Do we know whether Ungern truly believed he was Genghis Kahn, or were his claims just a power play, meant to appeal to the nationalism of his Mongolian subjects? We don’t know. But we do know that he killed, raped, and pillaged so much in Mongolia that his second in command, a native Mongolian, jumped ship after witnessing the depths of Ungern’s bloodlust. It is very hard to write about violent, unethical historical figures without inadvertently romanticizing them. James Palmer does an excellent job of showing what a shitty person Ungern was, while also keeping the reader anxiously turning pages to find out what this crazy little man does next.
In conclusion folks, if you want to read about one of the strangest forgotten conquests in history, read this book. Ungern is one of the most bizarre-ass historical figures I have ever encountered, and I read a LOT of history books. This book has it all. The history of Genghis Khan. An angsty frat boy becoming demented and violent. Pro-royalty sentiments and extreme right-wingedness. Blood. Battles. Horrible Tortures. Buddhist spiritual leaders who are scheming and surprisingly bisexual. A crazy weeb king. At this point all you need to add is the kitchen sink. So read this book my friends. And if you know any weebs, keep a close eye on them. They’re out for blood. You never know when one is going to go on an insane vision quest and try to cure their midlife crisis by invading a whole ass country.
May 5, 2025
A first rate biography of a forgotten monster. There is little, if anything, that is positive that can be said of Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg (Russian: Роман Фёдорович фон Унгерн-Штернберг, romanized: Roman Fyodorovich fon Ungern-Shternberg; 10 January 1886 – 15 September 1921), often referred to as Roman von Ungern-Sternberg or Baron Ungern. Even the company he kept was dubious (for example the White Russian general Grigory Mikhaylovich Semyonov see, as a starting point, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigory...
https://christopherothen.wordpress.co...) and the right wing cranks he still attracts are not the sort of people most of us would want to be the carries of our memory to future generations.
Yet there is something incredibly fascinating about Ungern-Sternberg and he has never been forgotten and attracted writers regularly in the hundred years since his death (see the very interesting post at https://christopherothen.wordpress.co... and my footnote *1 below). Indeed Ungern-Sternberg is the cliche White Russian General that everyone recognises not men like General Denekin the son of a serf or Mannheim who created modern Finland.
It is important to note that, like any good historian James Palmer is reticent about claiming as fact what we cannot know for sure. That makes much of the story he tells Ungern-Sternberg to be speculative. But it isn't it just not supported by the voluminous sources we normally rely on. But sources are there, most particularly 'Beasts, Men And Gods' by Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski and 'Asian Odyssey' by Dmitri Alioshin and the research conducted by Vladimir Pozner amongst exiled in the 1930s. What has emerged from the Russian archives has only added to, rather than negated, these earlier accounts.
Anyone interested in the period of the late Russian empire and revolution and civil war or the history of China, Tibet and Mongolia in the same period should read about Sternberg and Palmer's (for more information on the author of this book see https://aeon.co/users/james-palmer. He is not the James Palmer who writes steampunk si-fi) is an excellent place to start.
*1 The year the English tranbslation ofVladimir Pozner's French book came out, 1938, there was also another book about Ungern-Sternberg published in the UK and USA 'The Mountains and the Stars' by Valentin Tikhonov, which was the pseudonym of the author Robert Payne (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...).
https://christopherothen.wordpress.co...) and the right wing cranks he still attracts are not the sort of people most of us would want to be the carries of our memory to future generations.
Yet there is something incredibly fascinating about Ungern-Sternberg and he has never been forgotten and attracted writers regularly in the hundred years since his death (see the very interesting post at https://christopherothen.wordpress.co... and my footnote *1 below). Indeed Ungern-Sternberg is the cliche White Russian General that everyone recognises not men like General Denekin the son of a serf or Mannheim who created modern Finland.
It is important to note that, like any good historian James Palmer is reticent about claiming as fact what we cannot know for sure. That makes much of the story he tells Ungern-Sternberg to be speculative. But it isn't it just not supported by the voluminous sources we normally rely on. But sources are there, most particularly 'Beasts, Men And Gods' by Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski and 'Asian Odyssey' by Dmitri Alioshin and the research conducted by Vladimir Pozner amongst exiled in the 1930s. What has emerged from the Russian archives has only added to, rather than negated, these earlier accounts.
Anyone interested in the period of the late Russian empire and revolution and civil war or the history of China, Tibet and Mongolia in the same period should read about Sternberg and Palmer's (for more information on the author of this book see https://aeon.co/users/james-palmer. He is not the James Palmer who writes steampunk si-fi) is an excellent place to start.
*1 The year the English tranbslation ofVladimir Pozner's French book came out, 1938, there was also another book about Ungern-Sternberg published in the UK and USA 'The Mountains and the Stars' by Valentin Tikhonov, which was the pseudonym of the author Robert Payne (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...).
February 14, 2024
Apocalypse Now if it was set in Mongolia during the Russian Civil War.
Read
December 10, 2013Even by the standards of that playground of monsters that was the twentieth century, Baron Ungern-Sternberg stands out as a deranged horror. A mere thug in the dying days of Tsarist Russia, he was transfigured by war, revolution and civil war into something much worse. And yet in all his atrocities, and even his achievements (conquering a country with cavalry, less than a century ago), he still seems an almost cosy foretaste of what was to come. A mystical fantasist who loved the swastika emblem, and believed Jews and Bolsheviks (basically synonymous) were to blame for the world's evils; a paranoid seeker after conspiracies, turning Mongolia into a charnel-house - he at once prefigures those two much more famous utter cunts of the decades to follow. Hell, all three of them even share terrible taste in moustaches.
Were it just the tale of one awful man, this book might become wearying, even given the dry with with which Palmer tells the tale. But there's a wider world here - the peculiarities of modern(ish) Mongolian faith and culture, the eddies of central Asian politics in the early 20th century - all closed books to me, all filled out here. And yet he resists the temptation to move too far from Ungern - the 'Yellow Peril' fears of the time are discussed, for instance, but they could easily have taken over. Not least because of Russia's ambivalent position in such a paradigm - was it bulwark or vanguard of the 'Asiatic races'? Ungern himself ends up at a very interesting place with regards to all this, essentially by inverting it, and seeing Asia as the custodian of a truer, more primitive virtue which the Europeans have thrown away, and which Asia will in time return to them by any means necessary.
Oh, humanity. When it comes to murderous idiocy, you never cease to amaze.
Were it just the tale of one awful man, this book might become wearying, even given the dry with with which Palmer tells the tale. But there's a wider world here - the peculiarities of modern(ish) Mongolian faith and culture, the eddies of central Asian politics in the early 20th century - all closed books to me, all filled out here. And yet he resists the temptation to move too far from Ungern - the 'Yellow Peril' fears of the time are discussed, for instance, but they could easily have taken over. Not least because of Russia's ambivalent position in such a paradigm - was it bulwark or vanguard of the 'Asiatic races'? Ungern himself ends up at a very interesting place with regards to all this, essentially by inverting it, and seeing Asia as the custodian of a truer, more primitive virtue which the Europeans have thrown away, and which Asia will in time return to them by any means necessary.
Oh, humanity. When it comes to murderous idiocy, you never cease to amaze.
May 30, 2018
I don't normally review books from the pre-goodreads era -- who has time for that!? But while wasting the time I have therby everso wisely saved perusing other people's reviews of other books I was led to some storming comments on this fella, warts and all, and it reminded me of coming across this book in "Inner Asia" on a friend's shelf some time in 2011 (if memory serves).
Short, padded, and distincly lacking in illustrations or pictures, the sheer horror of the subject matter gets the attention of the reader. Tsarism, Bolshevism, Mongolian-Tibetan Buddhism, feudalisms of various types, and a host of other isms and unpleasant people get shown for what they are, and Palmer makes a reasonable stab at untangling the morality in this little piece of awful history. Hence four stars rather than three.
The Baron wanted to restore the Russian monarchy, and his charisma, skill on a horse and fascination with many things Asian led him in the early 1920s to briefly control almost by accident what has now become Mongolia, such that the Chinese occupiers were driven off, and when the Baron in turn was defeated by the Bolsheviks and Mongolian Communists, an independent-ish republic under the protection of the Soviets was created in 1920-something. Obviously there's a lot more to recent Mongolian history, but one upshot is that "Outer Mongolia" has remained independent of China, while Inner Mongolia has seen decades of intense assimilation policies and heavy-handed ethnic management by the PRC government, along with a much faster rate of industrialisation than Mongolia. Is it even possible to come to conclusions about who is better off?
Short, padded, and distincly lacking in illustrations or pictures, the sheer horror of the subject matter gets the attention of the reader. Tsarism, Bolshevism, Mongolian-Tibetan Buddhism, feudalisms of various types, and a host of other isms and unpleasant people get shown for what they are, and Palmer makes a reasonable stab at untangling the morality in this little piece of awful history. Hence four stars rather than three.
The Baron wanted to restore the Russian monarchy, and his charisma, skill on a horse and fascination with many things Asian led him in the early 1920s to briefly control almost by accident what has now become Mongolia, such that the Chinese occupiers were driven off, and when the Baron in turn was defeated by the Bolsheviks and Mongolian Communists, an independent-ish republic under the protection of the Soviets was created in 1920-something. Obviously there's a lot more to recent Mongolian history, but one upshot is that "Outer Mongolia" has remained independent of China, while Inner Mongolia has seen decades of intense assimilation policies and heavy-handed ethnic management by the PRC government, along with a much faster rate of industrialisation than Mongolia. Is it even possible to come to conclusions about who is better off?
January 25, 2022
I grabbed this book as I weeded the history section at the library..Ungern stares into your soul from the cover and the story is crazier than fiction. It certainly lives up to the expectations.
For those who are unfamiliar with the story, as I was, Baron Ungern was a mad Russian aristocrat who's viciousness thrived in the World War One Russian Army. He spent much of his career in Siberia and Mongolia and fell in love with the region, it's people, and the martial Buddhism practiced there - which he obsessively folded into his own apocalyptic beliefs. During the Russian Civil War he sided with the Whites, invaded and took over Mongolia, brutalized everyone to revelation-esque levels including his soldiers and civilians, and after restoring the Mongolian monarch marched into Red Siberia and was defeated. He finally was turned on by his remaining forces and turned over to the Soviets for trial and execution. It is a crazy story.
After looking at many of the other user reviews I do agree with their criticisms. There are little remaining primary sources and those that remain are biased, so the author relies a bit more on speculation. He also goes down rabbit trails regarding the region, it's people, and religion to provide context but it also helps to lengthen this short tale. However, it's a region and a chaotic time period I had little prior knowledge of and found many of the asides to be helpful and interesting.
For those who are unfamiliar with the story, as I was, Baron Ungern was a mad Russian aristocrat who's viciousness thrived in the World War One Russian Army. He spent much of his career in Siberia and Mongolia and fell in love with the region, it's people, and the martial Buddhism practiced there - which he obsessively folded into his own apocalyptic beliefs. During the Russian Civil War he sided with the Whites, invaded and took over Mongolia, brutalized everyone to revelation-esque levels including his soldiers and civilians, and after restoring the Mongolian monarch marched into Red Siberia and was defeated. He finally was turned on by his remaining forces and turned over to the Soviets for trial and execution. It is a crazy story.
After looking at many of the other user reviews I do agree with their criticisms. There are little remaining primary sources and those that remain are biased, so the author relies a bit more on speculation. He also goes down rabbit trails regarding the region, it's people, and religion to provide context but it also helps to lengthen this short tale. However, it's a region and a chaotic time period I had little prior knowledge of and found many of the asides to be helpful and interesting.
December 15, 2016
Palmer's biography rarely reaches beyond the cliche and toward the historical figure of Ungern (The Bloody White Baron), but this is only partly the author's fault. There were few primary sources left of the Baron's life and his lack of letters has not helped this. On top of this, there are decades of Soviet propaganda and Mongolian legends to wade through.
However, the author does not help the situation by reaching for the moralizing high road whenever possible which results in little more than virtue-signalling.
Baron Ungern is a fascinating character from the Russian civil war, and although deeply controversial biographies such as this do not help readers of history come to a deeper understanding of the man or his age. For the most part what Palmer has left his reader is one more example of crude mythologizing and little by the way of cogent psychological or historical insight.
Serious students of the Russian Civil War, especially its Mongolian/Asian theater, would do well to give this effort a pass.
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
However, the author does not help the situation by reaching for the moralizing high road whenever possible which results in little more than virtue-signalling.
Baron Ungern is a fascinating character from the Russian civil war, and although deeply controversial biographies such as this do not help readers of history come to a deeper understanding of the man or his age. For the most part what Palmer has left his reader is one more example of crude mythologizing and little by the way of cogent psychological or historical insight.
Serious students of the Russian Civil War, especially its Mongolian/Asian theater, would do well to give this effort a pass.
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
February 3, 2017
Very well written bio of a disturbingly psychopathic Russian nobleman who briefly "conquered" Mongolia in the years of and following the Russian Revolution and Civil War. I've always been fascinated by Mongolia and Genghis Khan, so when I heard of this one I thought I'd give it a try, since I knew very little of this corner of 20th century history.
I actually "read" it via the audible.com edition, which was very well produced. The litany of Baron Ungern's atrocities and excesses did become tiresome after a while, which makes this closer to a 3.5 star read to me than a 4-star. Someday, goodreads will allow half-stars(?)
I actually "read" it via the audible.com edition, which was very well produced. The litany of Baron Ungern's atrocities and excesses did become tiresome after a while, which makes this closer to a 3.5 star read to me than a 4-star. Someday, goodreads will allow half-stars(?)
September 30, 2017
I lost interest in this book when in the introduction he compared garish depictions of Buddhist gods to middle aged metal fans. Lots of borderline condescension. He referred to the invasion of Tibet as "victim chic". I understand the scorn that celebrity embracement of various pet causes inspires. The writing was dull and didn't hold my interest. It was a chore to complete this book. I gave two stars instead of one because the subject is interesting. I just wish that it were better written.
Also, history books need pictures and illustrations. Don't spend a paragraph describing a photograph. Show me the damned photo!
Also, history books need pictures and illustrations. Don't spend a paragraph describing a photograph. Show me the damned photo!
January 27, 2013
When it's done well, I love this type of lay history, well-sourced but written in a readable, non-academic way, and this book is an excellent example. It's a fascinating story about a truly bizarre historical character, a Russian aristocrat who became one of the last leaders of Mongolia prior to its being engulfed by the Russian revolution and becoming a Soviet satellite. Though a complete moral reprobate, Ungern-Sternberg is apparently still somewhat revered in Mongolia for having liberated them from the Chinese.
February 15, 2020
it’s mere pop history on its face, with an acerbic tone that mocks everyone and everything it deals with (bordering on the racist with its generalizations of the Mongolians and Chinese—pretty sure the author also used outmoded terms like ‘retarded’ to describe people) BUT it’s surprisingly well researched and as complete and honest a survey of the subject matter as possible
really gruesome and fascinating stuff, I appreciate it’s an Ungern bio that treats him with deserved contempt
really gruesome and fascinating stuff, I appreciate it’s an Ungern bio that treats him with deserved contempt
Displaying 1 - 30 of 176 reviews