Mongolia's Mad Baron and World War One

In the 19th century, Mongolia was absorbed into the Chinese Empire of the Manchurian Qing dynasty, which ruled it as a vassal state. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, Mongolia was sucked into the vortex of global geopolitical instability that featured the overthrow of the Qing dynasty by Sun Yat Sen’s revolution in 1911.

In the chaos, Mongolia launched its bid for freedom. In 1911 a Buddhist theocratic state was established under Bogd Khan (1869–1924), the eighth Jebtsundamba Khutuktu (Holy Precious Master), who ruled a country where one in three men were monks—Mongolia had been proselytized by the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism in the 16th century. For the next decade, Mongolia slipped in an out of independence during the Zhili-Fengtian wars of the northern warlords and their international backers, which included not only Russia but also Japan, Britain, and America.

Bogd Khan

The White Russian-Bolshevik wars featured a dubious cast of military chancers, including Nikolai Robert Maximillian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg (1886–1921)  otherwise known as the "Mad Baron." Born from a family of German aristocrats, he claimed descent from Ghengis Khan and dreamt of rebuilding the Mongol empire. As an independent warlord, he intervened in Mongolia's conflict with China. Sternberg began an immediate concentration of power around himself. Though de jure power was held by Bogd Khan, Sternberg acted as the true head of state and began insisting that he was the saviour of the lands of Mongolia and that he would bring the Mongols justice. To further his ambitions, he entered a dynastic marriage with a Manchurian princess. The Mad Baron, a ferocious bully, anti-semite, sadist, mystic, and drunkard, was nevertheless a brilliant horseman and cavalry officer. Above all he was known as a fanatical anti-communist who believed, not without reason, that, "we are not fighting a political party but a sect of murderers of all contemporary spiritual culture."

"Mad Baron"  von Ungern-Sternberg

However, the Mad Baron’s success was short lived. The Soviets, both in Mongolia and Siberia, had been helped by the withdrawal of the pro-White Russian Siberian expeditionary army that comprised Japanese, American, British, Italian, French, Belgium, Polish, Serb, Rumanian, and Chinese forces, which had landed in Vladivostok in August 1918 to engage the Bolsheviks. Their objectives were hopelessly divided by their nations’ conflicting operational parameters. 

Mongolian Cavalry

In August 1921, the Mad Baron was defeated while supporting anti-Soviet forces in Siberia. Captured by the Bolsheviks, he was tried and put in front of a firing squad. Thereafter Bogd Khan ruled under Bolshevik "protection." When this last Jebtsundamba Khutuktu died of cancer—or more likely poisoning—in 1924, he was not replaced. The Soviets consolidated their grip over Mongolia with the establishment of a Communist Mongolian People’s Republic. Later it was fear of the Soviet Union that was the key reason for Japan’s annexation of the whole of Manchuria in 1931 and their subsequent invasion of northern China. With some degree of logic, Japan’s leaders began to fear that unless it took control of a weak Chinese state, the Soviet Union would fill the power vacuum.

Source: The Spectator, 16 September 2023