allied intervention in russia 1918

The Problem with Generals: Military Observers and the Origins of the Intervention in Russiaand Persia, 1917-18Author(s): Brock MillmanReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Apr., 1998), pp. 291-320Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/260978 .

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Journal of Contemporary History Copyright ? 1998 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol 33(2), 291-320.

[0022-0094( 199804)33:2;291 -320;00391 I]

Brock Millman

The Problem with Generals: Military Observers and the Origins of the Intervention in Russia and Persia, 1917-18

It is a commonplace to write that modern armies were among Europe's first and most complete bureaucratic systems; and like most commonplaces, it is generally ignored. With relatively few honourable exceptions, what is also generally overlooked is that, as such, armies do not always produce strategic prescriptions based solely on a dispassionate examination of threats and capa- bilities. All too often, the national advantage, the institutional preference and the personal prospects and prejudices of the general formulating the strategy in

question are forced into an amalgam - sometimes bearing little resemblance to the strategy which a perfectly objective observer acting in isolation might have produced. All of this is, of course, to say that we too often forget that generals are human, that armies are composed of people, and that an army is, therefore, as apt as any other human organization to act and argue with an eye to its corporate preference, while generals are as likely as any other bureaucratic managers to confuse national interest with personal inclination.

This article will examine briefly one case in which generals and the military establishment seemed to distort a nation's regional strategy to an unusual degree - namely, the British intervention in Russia and Persia in the last years of the first world war. It will argue that bureaucratic impulses and the ambitions of local military commanders, initially dispatched as observers, combined with the grand strategy produced by Britain's War Cabinet to trans- form what began as a tentative reconnaissance into Russia and Central Asia, aimed at containing the victorious Germans, into a rather reckless intervention directed at crushing the Bolsheviks.

While the responsibility for the British intervention in Russia has generally been set squarely on the shoulders of political figures - notably Churchill, Amery and Milner - loud in their denunciations of the new order in Moscow, an examination of the correspondence relative to the first movements into Russia makes it quite clear that the initial policy of the government was rather more vacillating than might have been expected, given what followed, and that the driving force behind the movement of British troops into conflict with the Bolsheviks was almost always a British general on the ground, invariably pursuing a policy of his own devising and rejoicing in only tenuous communications with London. The real decision to intervene, that is, was made mainly by the generals in place rather than by London. Intervention was justified, at



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least initially, by reference to the strategic problems faced by Britain in the last years of the first world war. Once intervention had occurred, it carried on, mainly because it would have been more difficult to withdraw after victory in Europe had been assured than to continue. Intervention, therefore, should not be seen as the result of a cut and dried decision made in London: it derived from a process produced by a policy climate articulated through non-objective agents. Continuation of intervention, similarly, arose from indecision which failed to reconcile the fact of intervention with the alteration of the conditions which, in theory, had produced intervention in the first place.

How was the interventionist process put in train? The policy climate which eventually produced intervention originated, in its executive form, in the War Cabinet. This climate, in turn, motivated an army already convinced of the rightness - not to say the righteousness - of intervention to dispatch regional observers, the instructions for which were filtered through the army's institutional preference. Thus climate became instructions, and worries a reconnaissance. This being the case, the instructions that the generals took with them were rather different from those which the political establishment might have provided, had it not been compelled to work through the military machinery. But the transformation of policy from conception to action did not stop there. These observers, Generals Dunsterville, Malleson, Poole and Knox, arriving on the ground, reinterpreted their instructions in accordance with their own perceptions and interests. Quite apart from watching and reporting

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home, the generals quickly began to collect staffs and then troops, and then to move into action with these against those they considered their country's local enemies. In short, they began to act rather as generals are wont to do. The War Cabinet had sought objective reports on conditions in Russia, and especially on German activity. The army wanted to put itself into a position to fight the Germans tomorrow by advising the Whites against the Bolsheviks today - in other words, by winning local allies. The generals themselves, in fact, found no Germans in those parts of Russia and Persia in which they were operating, and quickly began to move into action against the Bolsheviks, as a sort of second- best, if better-hated enemy.

So much for the interventionist dynamic. The next question which must be addressed is: what were the strategic conceptions which led to the dispatch of observers, and gave the generals their opportunity to move towards intervention?

By spring 1917, the Russian war effort was quite obviously beginning to falter. By the end of the summer it was failing. By the autumn, following the Bolshevik coup, it had collapsed. Moreover, on the Western Front, Britain's offensive in Flanders was failing to make headway despite extremely heavy casualties. To make matters worse, the French army, by June 1917, was conva- lescent at best; by winter, the Italian army was virtually comatose; the Ameri- can army, meanwhile, remained a pledge rather than a fighting force. There- fore, it seemed certain that the war was about to enter an entirely new phase.

This was as clear to the politicians in charge of Britain's war effort as it was to the rebel French-Wilson school of strategy within the army.' Both Sir Douglas Haig (Commander BEF) and Sir William Robertson (Chief of the Imperial General Staff [CIGS] until February 1918), on the other hand, continued to insist that the failure of other fronts argued for an even more vigorous concentration on the one decisive front remaining - the Western Front. But when the Robertson-Lloyd George duel ended with the resignation of Robertson in February 1918, and his replacement by General (later Field Marshal) Sir Henry Wilson, Haig was left as almost the only 'western' voice. From this point, a change of strategy was inevitable; indeed, such a change had been in the offing since the establishment of the Supreme War Council at Versailles in December 1917 - intended by both Lloyd George and Wilson, its creators, as a means by which Haig and Robertson might be brought to heel.

The Haig diaries are cited with permission of the present Earl Haig. Extracts from papers held in the collections of the National Army Museum, King's College London, Churchill College Cambridge and the Imperial War Museum appear with permission of their trustees.

1 This refers, of course, to the strategic combination formed in the summer of 1917 by Sir John French, ex-Commander BEF, and Sir Henry Wilson, CIGS after February 1918, in order to critique the strategy being followed by Britain, to date, which these two indicted for bringing Britain to the brink of defeat. For this critique, see especially, PRO CAB 27/8 'WP 60 Future State of the War, Future Prospects and Future Action', French, 20 October 1917; 'WP 61 Future State of the War, Future Prospects, and Future Action', Wilson, 20 October 1917; and, PRO CAB 25/68, '1918 Campaign', Wilson Memorandum, 19 January 1918.

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Even before Robertson's fall, however, by the end of 1917 there was a general conviction that Britain would be left with little choice but to move from the alliance strategy of 'concentric' attacks followed in the war's first years, towards a new strategy. This would involve Britain, unique among the Entente powers in its ability to undertake offensive options, adopting a 'peripheral' strategy against a Germany victorious on the continent - at least until the Americans arrived in France in sufficient strength to become a strategic factor.2 A probable feature of this strategy would be the movement of British, allied and auxiliary forces into contact with the Germans and their confederates throughout the Near East, South-West and Central Asia, and perhaps, in the far north along the emerging Russo-Finnish frontier. The replacement of Robertson by Wilson in spring 1918 merely permitted a revision to go forward for which the groundwork had already been laid.

Such a revision was less traumatic than it might have been, since Wilson presided over a General Staff rather different from that over which Robertson had ruled, and which had itself been moving away from the Robertson-Haig prescription for victory in the war by victory in the west. In Wilson's General Staff, the principal figures were his friend Major-General Sir Percy Radcliffe,3 the Director of Military Operations (DMO), and Lieutenant-General Sir

George Macdonough, the Director of Military Intelligence (DMI). Radcliffe was a new appointment and Wilson's man. Macdonough, on the other hand, was a Robertson legacy, but acceptable to Wilson, as he had come to question the 'western' strategy so vigorously supported by his previous chief and had

already moved independently to prepare the ground for a revision he felt essential. Macdonough had done so in his capacity as military adviser to, and ex officio member of, many of the British and inter-allied subcommittees con-

sidering the possibility of peripheral operations - notably, the Persian, Middle East and Russian committees.4 In these committees, before the arrival of Wilson, Macdonough had consistently emphasized the importance of the war on the fringes of Europe. After Wilson's arrival, Macdonough supported him and continued to attempt to further the strategic vision they shared. Even after his exclusion from full membership in the omnibus Eastern Committee in summer 1918, Macdonough continued to attend meetings, and as Lord Curzon readily admitted, little actually changed in the way in which business was transacted.5 Wilson himself, of course, as CIGS, was the principal source of strategic opinion for the War Cabinet.

2 This was the French view as well. See, for example, PRO CAB 28/1: Records of a Conference at Downing Street, 2-8 August 1917 (particularly Foch's depositions on 8 August); notes from the Paris Conference 1 December 1917; and notes from the January-July meetings of the Supreme War Council. See also M. Carley, Revolution and Intervention (Montreal 1983). 3 Substituted for the disgraced Sir Frederick Maurice in April 1918. 4 For example, the Middle East, and Russian Sub-committees of the War Cabinet and the later Eastern Committee which combined the functions of these in spring 1918. In addition, it was

Macdonough, who, Wilson being otherwise engaged, would substitute at inter-allied conferences. 5 PRO CAB 27/30, EC 1008, 'The War in the East', 1 August 1918.

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To say the least, this trio - Wilson, Macdonough, Radcliffe - by conviction as well as inclination, was much more amenable to the new peripheral concepts than Robertson would have been, had he remained in office. Robertson had been anything but a maximalist as far as his position regarding the possible extension of the war went. Macdonough, as DMI, could not change this; even in the various committees of which he was a member, he only had the power to advise and warn. Wilson, on the other hand, like Macdonough, was quite willing to envision a possible extension of the war - indeed, he considered it inevitable - and moreover, hated Bolshevism with a rare hatred. Robertson had never been sanguine in his assessment of Russia's possible contribution to the war, and therefore did not much miss the Russians once they had dropped out. Wilson, on the other hand, blamed the Bolsheviks for destroying one of the pillars upon which the Entente had constructed its common strategy. He identified Lenin's men, almost entirely, as German agents. In addition, Wilson, and his school, feared the implications of the October Revolution for Britain's own war effort to an almost hysterical degree. Would the British people follow the Russian example? Wilson was inclined to think that they well might, failing drastic measures against the centre of the Bolshevik contagion.6 If this were not enough, in Wilson's eyes the Russian collapse exacerbated a threat to the Empire which few Britons were willing to view with equanimity. Until spring 1917, the Russians had been advancing into Turkish Anatolia from Northern Persia and the Caucasus. Following the collapse of the Russian army, the Turks in turn began to advance into Central Asia. A threat to India was perceived. It was only 'a question of time', Wilson advised the Cabinet, 'before most of Asia became a German colony, and nothing can impede the enemy's progress towards India, in defence of which the British Empire will have to fight at every disadvan- tage'.7 Persia, Afghanistan and Turkestan once again became calculations in Britain's world strategy. Finally, even if their analysis had been identical on all points, it is unlikely that Robertson would have permitted any slide into intervention. Before sending British troops into conflict with the Bolsheviks, he would have insisted first on a clear decision to intervene, then on the designation of available troops, and finally on the appointment of responsible commanders. When in office, Robertson consistently had pushed for the rationalization of such peripheral deployments as he could not prevent. There is no reason to think that he would have acted differently with regard to

6 This is clear even from Wilson's published correspondence and diary extracts. See, for example, C. Callwell (ed.), Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries, 2 vols, (London 1927); and K. Jeffery (ed.), The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson 1918-1922 (London 1985). 7 PRO CAB 27/7, WP 70, 'British Military Policy 1918-1919. Situation of the Military Forces of the British Empire', 25 July 1918. Robertson, on the other hand, as the one-time section chief for frontier and border-state intelligence in the Indian army, and later chief of the foreign section of the Directorate of Military Intelligence, was quite aware that geography alone made any realistic threat to India unlikely. See Robertson, From Private to Field Marshal (London 1921), 134-6, 273.

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intervention. A 'slide' into peripheral adventures was not in his script.8 Wilson was not one to proceed so logically.

While the anti-Bolsheviks in the Cabinet, like Churchill, were constrained to follow a common political line produced by a coalition government (which included Labour representatives), there were no similar limitations affecting the instructions which the Army High Command could pass to its subordinates. Thus, while it seemed certain that Britain's grand strategy must change in the aftermath of the Russian collapse, it was more than probable -

given the perceptions and prejudices of the soldiers guiding British strategic formulation - that the Eastern dimension of this new grand strategy was apt to take a more forthrightly anti-Bolshevik and forward direction than was otherwise likely. It was also probable - given their analysis of the altered threat to the Empire created by the new conditions - that the new peripheral strategy emerging through the winter of 1917 would have as two of its principal features a movement into Persia and an intervention against the Bolsheviks. All of this, of course, aimed ultimately to produce a different type of war in 1919 than had been fought to date. This last aim, at least, Wilson and company shared with their political masters.

What follows will be a brief examination of this process in operation: a process whereby the War Cabinet's tentative peripheral strategy in the East became the army's interventionist policy - the even more, and ever more vigorous forward policy defined by the operations of generals initially dis-

patched only to observe. The link between the War Cabinet and the army, of course, was Wilson; that between the army and the generals was

Macdonough. The generals themselves, largely due to poor communications, once dispatched, operated as virtually independent agents. Wilson and

Macdonough, therefore, might be regarded as the mediums through which

policy was altered as it progressed from conception, through incorporation, to execution; the generals were the executors of a policy, in fact, which bore only superficial resemblance to policy as envisioned. The cases considered will be the interventions in Western Persia and the Caucasus, Eastern Persia and Central Asia, North Russia and Siberia.

British intervention in Persia dated from an early period of the war, when it had been predicated upon fears of a Turkish advance eastward, and of a seemingly imminent Persian collapse which might bring yet another Moslem power into conflict with Britain and British India - the greatest and, in British minds, the most vulnerable Moslem power of them all. The Russians, similarly, feared the possible extension of German and Turkish influence into a

region which they viewed as being a particularly Russian interest. By summer 1916, therefore, much of Persia had come to be controlled by external actors: in the south, by the British through the agency of Sir Percy Sykes's South Persia

8 See, for example, his campaign for the appointment of a responsible GOC Persia as early as

February 1917. PRO CAB 23/1, WC 63, 12 February 1917.

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Rifles (SPR),9 supported by an Indian Brigade in Shiraz under Sykes's command, with another at Bushire under direct control of India; and in the north by the Russians - under the Grand Duke, and later Yudenich, operating from Persian and Caucasian bases in an invasion of Anatolia itself.'0 In the Persian capital, Teheran, the Russian and British ambassadors enjoyed a position of predominance - a position safeguarded by the existence in the capital of a garrison of Persian Cossacks commanded by Russian officers. While a few German agents remained at large, their scope for effective action was limited, as much of the country had been effectively occupied."

By the winter of 1916-17, however, the situation had begun to change rapidly for the worse, at least in the eyes of the Entente. This was due to the gradual collapse of the Russian army and the consequent withdrawal of the Russians from Eastern Turkey and the virtual disappearance of any effective Russian forces in Persia itself. For the British, the power vacuum thus created produced a rethinking of regional strategy. For one thing - and of most concern to us here - North-Western Persia was no longer in Entente hands, and might be expected either to fall to the Turks or to prove a fruitful field in which the Germans once again might attempt to sow the seeds of anti-British tribal unrest - particularly as they seemed to be advancing in the region, were busily establishing very cordial relations with the Caucasian successor states (in particular the Georgians), and were viewed, moreover, as a potential ally by the Persian Constitutional Party. On the other hand, such was the disarray into which Russian collapse had precipitated the region that North Persia

9 The SPR were, theoretically, a European-officered Persian gendarmerie. By 1917 they had become, in fact, a British auxiliary formation, effectively commanded by Percy Sykes who was, in theory, only the Inspector-General. Though in Persia service, Sykes had received from the Cabinet the financial and command powers of a GOC in the field. For Sykes's operations, see F. Moberly, Operations in Persia (London 1987); C. Sykes, Wassmuss (London 1936), for the German threat; and Sykes's own account in P. Sykes, Through Deserts and Oases of Central Asia (London 1920) and his History of Persia (London 1920). For the documentary record see PRO WO 106/55, and 106/56, 'Despatches from India'; WO 106/926, 'Strength and Distribution of SPR etc.'; WO 106/932, 'Situation in Persia with Reference to the SPR'; WO 106/933, 'Minor Operations Undertaken by the SPR 28 March-25 June 1917'; WO 106/934, 'Colonel Orton's Report on the SPR', 26 May 1917; WO 106/937, 'Report on Operations in Persia 1916'; WO 106/938, 'Operations Against Tribes in South Persia September-October 1917'; WO 106/940, 'Notes from War Diaries of SPR 1918'; and WO 106/941, 'Minor Operations in South Persia May to July 1918'. See also the minutes of the Eastern Committee for this period in PRO CAB 27/24 and relevant communications in CAB 27/26, and 27/27. Sykes survived until the end of the war, when, his rapport with the Persians no longer being required, he was removed from his position. PRO CAB 27/36, EC 2384, 'The South Persia Rifles, Position of Sir P. Sykes', 16 November 1918. 10 See, in addition to Operations in Mesopotamia, PRO WO 106/913, 'Russian Cooperation with Force D, 3 March 1917-3 August 1917'. 11 See, for British policy in Persia prior to the Russian collapse, IWM, Operations in Persia 1914-1919 (London 1987). See also PRO CAB 21/22, Curzon, 'The Present Position in Persia', 19 February 1917; Hirtzel (FO), 'Recent Events in Persia. Political', 17 February 1917; G. Staff, 'Note on Persia', 19 February 1917. For the German agents in Persia, in addition to sources indicated previously, see PRO WO 106/946, 'Notes Regarding the German Parties in Persia', May 1916.

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might also fall into the hands of Bolshevik forces then organizing themselves across the border and in Azerbaijanistan and apparently allied with the powerful North Persian Jangali confederacy, linked itself, seemingly, to the Germans.'2 Amid the confusion and welter of often contradictory evidence, about the only thing that remained clear to London was that some attempt should be made to maintain communications with such Russian forces in the Caucasus as might be disposed to carry on with the war.

This was the background for the British decision in December 1917 to dispatch General Dunsterville to Persia. It was hoped that if Dunsterville could not produce order out of chaos, then at least he might determine whether such chaos was apt to develop in directions prejudicial to or supportive of Britain's regional position. The army thought that Dunsterville could also assume some sort of executive control over the numerous missions already dispatched to the region by the energetic Macdonough, and might even, perhaps, be able to provide some little assistance to the hard-pressed Armenians of Tiflis.'3 Finally, London thought that perhaps some of the locals - the Armenians, the Georgians, the Tartars - might be disposed to continue with the war. If this were the case, then Dunsterville could be the channel through which these might be sustained. He might become, that is, something like a Caucasian T.E. Lawrence."4 The Dunsterville Mission, the Persian Committee hastened to add, however, must not become a field force. Even a small quantity of troops, it was thought, would simply become a demand for more, 'in the event of

any catastrophe'.15 Dunsterville, in effect, was to be a catspaw, but not a commander. Such was the Dunsterville Mission in conception.

The Dunsterville Mission in practice was rather different. Dunsterville left India, where he had been the Commander of the Peshawar Brigade, for

Baghdad on 6 January 1918. By early February, he had arrived in Persia and was moving north. By its constitution and nature, the Dunsterville Mission contained the seeds of the ensuing British debacle at Baku and intervention in the Caucasus, Western Persia and parts of Central Asia.

One of the primary reasons why the Dunsterville Mission changed from one of reconnaissance to one of intervention, as has been noted, was that before Dunsterville was dispatched to Persia, Macdonough had already opened up his

private war against the Bolsheviks. Military agents had been dispatched to

many of the newly emergent and wavering Caucasian polities; other British

12 See, for a useful summary of official views in London, PRO CAB 27/27, Nicholson, 'Summary of Recent Policy in Persia', 8 June 1918. 13 PRO CAB 23/5, WC 328, 22 January 1918, and PRO WO 106/983, 'British Military Mission to the Caucasus, Note on Preparation and Organization'. See, for an example of the

doings of one of the early 'Macdonough' missions, PRO WO/4757, 'Report from Major G.M. Goldsmith British Military Agent Army of the Caucasus, August 1918-June 1919'. Dispatched by Macdonough in November 1917 to organize and train Kurdish and Armenian levies in Northern

Iraq, Goldsmith fell under Dunsterville's control. Dunsterville employed him in his Intelligence Section. 14 PRO CAB 23/4, WC 289, 3 December 1917. 15 PRO WO 106/983, Minutes of a Meeting of the Persian Committee, 9 February 1918.

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observers already on the ground had been rebriefed, and where they had once liaised with the Russians, now advised the Whites. Thus, while initially it had been the War Cabinet's intention that Dunsterville should restrict his activities to observing and reporting on the situation, and perhaps to advising local forces on their operations against the Germans and Turks, this plan was rendered nugatory from the beginning by the reality on which the Dunsterville Mission was superimposed. Indeed, it came to draw its staff from other missions, previously dispatched on the authority of the DMI, and possessing much broader terms of reference. Take, for instance, the case of Colonel Pike, GSO1 of the mission. Pike had been independently dispatched by the DMI to act as military agent and adviser extraordinaire to the Georgians. Dunsterville crossed paths with him in Baghdad, and worked him into his own staff as head of intelligence. Meanwhile, Pike's own mission remained, and in the dual capacity of intelligence chief to Dunsterville and plenipotentiary for the DMI, he proceeded to Tiflis. There he acted quite simply as an agent provocateur, pushing the locals not to resist the Germans so much as to overthrow the Bolsheviks. Later in 1918, Pike was killed fighting against the advancing Bolsheviks.'6 He was not alone, and his activities and those of his fellows prejudiced from the beginning the conclusions and activities of the mission as a whole.

By February 1918, with Dunsterville already on his way to Persia from Mesopotamia, and with the advance elements of what was becoming a substantial escort having arrived in Kermanshah,'7 it became obvious that such limited instructions as Dunsterville had received were out of date. Such was the extent of Russian decay, the rate of Turkish advance, and the extent of German influence in the Caucasus that the mission as conceived was unlikely to achieve anything useful.'8 The War Cabinet was faced with a dilemma. It could either withdraw the mission or follow Wilson's advice and give Dunsterville a more comprehensive brief - increasing his troop strength by dispatching cavalry and armoured cars from Mesopotamia, permitting him to raise native levies, and charging him with securing the route to the north, pending a possible clarification of the situation in Russia itself.19 London was faced with the choice, that is, of abandoning observation as pointless or countenancing veiled intervention.

Unable to reach a clear decision, the War Cabinet simply abdicated responsibility. Rather than choose either alternative, it left Dunsterville in

16 See PRO WO 95/4690, 'South Russia. Report from Major G.M. Goldsmith'. 17 For the early history of Dunsterforce, see PRO WO 95/4967, Mesopotamia GHQ General Staff War Diaries January-December 1918. See also other documents in this series noted below. The decision to provide Dunsterville with a substantial escort seems to have been made by the Persian Committee, following the advice of Macdonough. PRO WO 106/983, 'Persian Com- mittee, 26 January 1918'. 18 For Turco-German activities at this time, see the various editions of the General Staff's memorandum, 'The Turco-German Advance into the Caucasus', in PRO CAB 27/28, 27/29, 27/30, etc. 19 PRO CAB 23/5, WC 354, 26 February 1918.

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place, sent him reinforcements - eventually Dunsterville came to command something like a Division20 - and passed responsibility for the region to the new Eastern Committee chaired by Lord Curzon.21

The Foreign Office hoped, meanwhile - rather piously one suspects that the political damage could be limited. Whatever troops Dunsterville might need, it hoped, would come from the Persian Cossack Brigade or from the SPR. In the army, Macdonough's intelligence department derided such wishful thinking as a 'failure to grasp the general situation', and argued that only British or Indian troops would suffice.22 So it was British and Indian troops that were sent. The Dunsterville Mission - more properly the 'Caucasian Military Mission' - thus began its rapid transformation into 'Dunsterforce'.23 Dunsterville, dispatched as an adviser and envoy, began his own evolution into a commander in his own right. From this point, London quickly began to lose whatever control over events in Persia it might have retained.

In addition to those problems already indicated, if there is a single overriding reason for the passing of effective authority from London to Dunster- ville, this derived from the fact that as Dunsterville moved further into Persia he steadily moved out of contact with superior authority. London was asked less for instructions than to approve something Dunsterville was already doing. This need not have warped policy unduly, except that, as quickly became obvious, Dunsterville conceived his mission in rather more active terms than were justified, given his instructions from the War Cabinet - even

allowing for the fact that these instructions had been filtered through the activist Macdonough. The plain truth was that, from his arrival in Persia, Dunsterville moved steadily to a position in which Dunsterforce exercised effective control over much of Eastern Persia and, as a force rather than a mission, moved into undisguised conflict with both the local Bolsheviks and the advancing Turks. Where he had been sent to observe, Dunsterville moved to the position of becoming a principal player in the game. Thus, if the

question were put, why did the British intervene in Persia and the Caucasus in 1918?, then the answer could be given that Britain did not intervene Dunsterville did.

20 Dunsterforce came to include 36th (Indian) Infantry Brigade, composed of 1/4 Hampshires, 1/2 Gurkhas (mounted as a mobile column in Ford cars), 36th Sikhs, and 1/6 Gurkhas; 39th

(British) Infantry Brigade, composed of 4th Staffords, 7th Gloucesters, and 9th Worcesters. Other, unbrigaded units, operating in Persia included 9th Warwicks, 48th Pioneers (Indian), 26th

Punjabis (Indian), 62nd Punjabis (Indian) and 14th Hussars. Most of the unbrigaded troops operated under the command of Commander Persian line of communications, responsible for the

security of the Hamadan-Kasvin corridor. See PRO WO 95 5042-5044 for Dunsterforce war diaries. Thus, Dunsterforce came to bear an astonishing resemblance to an Indian Divisional command - itself the nucleus of a force which, including auxiliaries, amounted to perhaps a

Corps. 21 PRO CAB 23/5, WC 363, 11 March 1918; and WC 369, 21 March 1918. 22 PRO WO 106/983, 'The Caucasus and Persia', MO2a, 2 January 1918. 23 The actual change of name followed from a rather logical decision of the Commander in

Mesopotamia on 3 February 1918. PRO WO 95/4967, Mesopotamia GHQ General Staff War Diaries January-December 1918. Entry for 3 February 1918.

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What did Dunsterville do? Nothing that could even remotely be considered observing and reporting; little even that could properly be considered advising indigenous forces. Quite simply, Dunsterville moved toward outright control of the region, and toward conventional conflict with Britain's Turkish and Bolshevik enemies. He raised as many local forces as possible to protect his line of communications, wrung as many regular troops from Mesopotamia and India as were available, and moved with these to Baku. There he concentrated the fighting elements of his command and took control of most of the Caspian fleet. By the simple fact of his moving north and establishing a chain of posts behind him, much of Eastern Persia passed into Dunsterville's hands. While this seems to have shocked the Eastern Committee, it was no surprise to the army - as Military Intelligence had argued earlier: 'To attempt to organize the Caucasus without securing Persia is to build without foundations.'4 By being in Baku, Dunsterville inspired a coup which overthrew the local Bolsheviks. At the side of the emergent Menshevik Armenian Committee - his newfound allies - Dunsterville moved into conventional conflict with the advancing Turks, while disarming and alienating the regional Bolsheviks. By the time the crash came, Dunsterville had become the de facto governor of the city.25

With the fall of Baku in September 1918, Dunsterville was discredited and replaced, and Dunsterforce withdrew to Enzeli. General Thompson arrived in Persia shortly thereafter to take over command of what had been redesignated Norperforce.26

It is not the details, of course, in which we are interested here. Rather, it is the process by which a War Cabinet 'mission' became a local coup followed by a general engagement. This the surviving documentation makes relatively clear. It is obvious, for one thing, that neither the War Cabinet nor the Eastern Committee ever conceived of such a development. Dunsterville's mission was envisioned as a means by which observation might be maintained over a vulnerable region, and contact established with such local forces as expressed a willingness to oppose a potential Turco-German advance. Whereas Dunster- ville's role was conceived as that of an attache to a foreign power, he, in fact, became a power in his own right.

24 PRO WO 106/983, 'Caucasus and Persia', MO2a, 2 January 1918. Such an intrusion was to be justified by reference to German depredations in the country, rather in the same way that it is in the official histories! 25 PRO CAB 27/32, EC 1540, Commander-in-Chief India to WO, 12 September 1918. 26 For Dunsterville's activities in Persia see PRO CAB 27/26-32 (Eastern Committee); PRO WO 95/5042-5045 (War Diaries); and PRO WO 106/55, 56 and 983. See also, for the West Persian and Caucasian intervention, IWM, Operations in Persia, op.cit.; W. Allen, Caucasian Battlefields (London 1953); E. Dunsterville, The Adventures of Dunsterforce (London 1920), and Stalky's Reminiscences (London 1928); H. Williamson, Farewell to the Don (London 1970); and L. Morris, 'Disillusioned Friends: British Officers in Southern Russia 1919-1920', Army Quarterly and Defence Journal, CIX, 3 (July 1979), 319-36. In the war diaries in the PRO, one volume is missing. It is the Norperforce diary for the period immediately prior to the termination of the Caucasian intervention (November 1920-May 1921). It can be found in the National Army Museum as NAM 6403/2, apparently misfiled as an Ironside document.

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Although more sympathetic, even the army was opposed to Dunsterville's policy. Dunsterville's regional superior, General Marshall (GOC Meso- potamia) argued that the execution of his mission, as Dunsterville had come to envision it, would involve the maintenance of such a long line of communications as to be entirely beyond the scope of the mission's resources - including anything that could be spared from Mesopotamia. Even to supplant the Russians in North-West Persia, Marshall thought, would take a Division supported by a Cavalry Brigade. To maintain such a force would take all the transport the British army in Mesopotamia possessed. Such forces, Marshall thought, could be used more fruitfully where they were. In this criticism Marshall was supported by the CIGS, Wilson.27 Accordingly, Dunsterville was warned away from Baku.28 He went ahead regardless, extending his force to the limits of its strength, and eking out his single shadow Division with such local forces as he could place on the payroll: Persians, for line of communications duties; Russians under Bicharakoff to act with the main body; and, eventually, Armenians to fight at Baku. Only at the end of May 1918, when he was well on his way to Baku and already had envoys in the city, did Dunsterville receive permission from the War Office to even visit the city.29 By the end of June, most of his effective force was concentrated in and around the

city. There is no evidence that the Cabinet was more than informed, or the

army more than consulted. Why did Dunsterville act so? Let us remember, once again, that the

Dunsterville Mission had been prejudiced from the beginning by the fact that it overlay, and had absorbed, earlier and more ambitiously briefed missions. A limited conception, therefore, of what Dunsterville should be doing was

hardly in keeping with the very different policy of forthright action against the Bolsheviks already initiated by the army itself - or perhaps, more properly, by Macdonough himself. The DMI had, after all, already sent military advisers to whichever centre of power in the region seemed willing to take up the cudgels against the Bolsheviks. The Dunsterville Mission did not supersede these missions, nor was it separate from them; rather, it inherited both their

personnel and their functions. Dunsterville might have been conceived as

becoming T.E. Lawrence writ large; but he was a T.E. Lawrence following on the heels of a multitude of Colonel Pikes, whose activities his policy on the

ground had to accommodate. In addition, when he arrived in Persia, Dunsterville found himself faced with

a situation even more fluid than that imagined in London. It seemed to promise great prizes, if he were bold, and threaten great and truly incalculable con-

sequences if, on behalf of his country, he hung back. His mission having already been compromised by its composition, it is probable that Dunsterville's

analysis of the situation in Persia and the Caucasus pushed him beyond the

27 Operations in Mesopotamia, op. cit., 271 and 281. See also PRO CAB 27/26, CIGS comments to EC 222, 'Defence of India', 3 May 1918. 28 Operations in Persia, op.cit., 299. 29 Ibid., 303.

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point of no return. Steadily the Caucasian Military Mission became Dunster- force, and Dunsterforce in turn became a military factor of the first importance in the Caucasus and Persia. Observation, that is, had become intervention, the Cabinet an often baffled and sometimes horrified godfather and the army a parent sometimes embarrassed by the actions of this overly precocious child.

Even the fall of Dunsterville did not expunge the fact of Dunsterforce; it simply became Norperforce - the same thing under different command - and continued to exercise effective control over most of Eastern Persia. In the New Year, its local agent, the Menshevik government of Baku, was replaced by a similar grouping at Askabad, which, encouraged by the British presence, broke with the Bolsheviks and burned its bridges by shooting the local Commissars.30 Following the withdrawal of German and Turkish forces at the end of September, in response to their defeats in the west, Norperforce surged forward once again, and rapidly regained control over North-Western Persia, the Caspian Sea and portions of what had been the Russian Caucasus. The policy of constituting a bloc of local clients against the Germans became one of creating a similar grouping between the Middle East and whatever order eventually emerged in Russia.31 The collapse of the German army, that is, had no effect on a policy which, in theory, had been grounded in a determination to stop the expansion of that army eastward. Obviously the aims of British policy had been modified considerably between conception and execution.

Had there been a decision to intervene? Indeed there had not; rather there was a process by which, at a relatively early stage, intervention became inevitable.

The story of British intervention in Eastern Persia and Russian Central Asia is quite similar. British intervention in Eastern Persia began in 1915 and arose from anxiety in Delhi and London about the gradual percolation of German agents eastward through Persia towards Afghanistan, which, it was suspected, they intended to attempt to raise against British India. Initially, this intervention took the form of an Anglo-Russian 'cordon' drawn along the Afghan frontier. So successful were the operations of the allied forces in the cordon that in spring 1917 even the regional commander suggested that a reduction in his forces might be possible.32

By summer 1917, however, the Russian half of this cordon began to unravel and all thoughts of reduction were set aside. British India was compelled, first, to extend its half of the cordon north and, second, to send out a general officer capable of commanding what was becoming a substantial force - something like a Division.33 The establishment of such a force, and the arrival of a regional 30 PRO CAB 27/32, EC 1683, India to War Office, 25 September 1918. 31 PRO CAB 27/36, EC 2243, 'Future Settlement of Transcaucasia', 5 December 1918. 32 Operations in Persia, op. cit., 241. 33 For the composition and activities of the Seistan Cordon force, see PRO WO 95/5419, Seistan Cordon Force War diaries; and WO 106/955, 'Despatches on the Operations of the Sistan [sic] Cordon Field Force July 1916-June 1918'. See also, Operations in Persia, op. cit.

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commander - as in the case of Western Persia - soon led to a raising of sights. There had been commanders of the cordon force before, of course, - Brigadiers Dyer,34 Tanner and Dale had commanded in succession - but the arrival of a Major-General, Malleson, with an increased force and a brief which pushed him north into what had been the Russian zone, made true intervention inevitable. The 'cordon' began to establish relations with anti-Bolshevik forces in Central Asia, and by co-operating with such forces, rapidly became less an anti-German barrage than an anti-Bolshevik intervention.

As in the Caucasian case, such intervention built upon the liaison network which had been established before the revolution. Major Redl, for instance - a prominent British spy-master during the intervention - turned his liaison mission in Meshed into the most active British listening post in Central Asia after receiving instructions from the army to expand his intelligence networks there.35 That Redl did so illustrates rather well the extent of control exercised by London over its regional operatives. In this early stage, it was the army, rather than the War Cabinet, that was calling the shots. At best, the Cabinet was kept poorly informed. Later, even the army would have only a sketchy idea of what was actually happening on the ground. To continue with this example, Redl's agents and troops began to cross into Russian Central Asia in May. This was despite the fact that in March the government of India and the Cabinet in London had recommended caution.36 In April, India had dispatched terms of reference to Redl forbidding him to send troops across the frontier into Russian Turkestan and, to make doubly certain, London underlined this prohibition.37 Two months after it had recommended caution, one month after it forbade violations of the frontier, news arrived in London that the Meshed mission was not only in liaison with the Central Asian rebels, but was sending troops to their assistance! Typically, this fact was noted without comment by a War Cabinet rather too disposed to let the man on the ground get on with his private war.38 The War Office, less so disposed, cabled again that Redl was not to go into Russia, but there is no sign that anybody in Central Asia took much notice, if they even received these communications.39

As in the Caucasian case, the moving force behind British intervention in Central Asia was a member of the military bureaucracy expressing corporate desiderata - in this case General Sir Charles Monro, the Commander-in-Chief India - acting through a local commander, Malleson, who reinterpreted British policy in a more 'forward' direction still. It was not that the War Office in London would have disapproved of what Malleson was doing in Central Asia, but that it truly had no idea, and had no more control over what was happening there than did the Cabinet. Wilson's own estimate of the problem

34 See R. Dyer, The Raiders of the Sarhad (London 1921). 35 Operations in Persia, op. cit., 267. 36 Ibid., 294. 37 PRO CAB 27/25, EC 131, Commander-in-Chief India to War Office, 12 April 1918. 38 See, for instance, PRO CAB 27/24, Eastern Committee, 6th Meeting, 3 May 1918. 39 PRO CAB 27/26, EC 313 WO to CGS Simla, 17 May 1918.

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of Central Asia, for instance, was that the key to the situation was Afghanistan rather than one or another Khanate. He argued, therefore, that the best security for Britain would be to involve the King of Afghanistan in a war with the Bolsheviks as an ally of the Emir of Bokhara. This was a policy forward enough to gladden the hearts of anybody on the ground; it was not, however, the policy being followed, even though Wilson was CIGS.40

What did Malleson do? Of course he maintained the cordon - though it was recognized by the time of his arrival that German penetration into Afghanistan through Persia was unlikely. In truth, he had no real choice in this matter: the cordon served the useful purpose of maintaining communications with the north rather in the same way that, in Western Persia, the Hamadan-Kasvin road not only marked a line beyond which the Turks must not be allowed to advance, but tied Dunsterville's Caspian forces to their Mesopotamian bases. Like Dunsterville, Malleson quickly began to concen- trate the bulk of his forces in the north near the Persian frontier with Russia and beyond. Indeed, so extreme did Malleson's concentration in the north become, that India eventually came to realize that the East Persian cordon had become nothing more nor less than a line of communications. This being the case, it was detached from Malleson - by now totally absorbed in events in Central Asia - and came under orders of the GOC 4th Quetta Division.41

Meanwhile, from the listening posts established earlier, and from various missions dispatched to disaffected or vulnerable Central Asian polities Tashkent and Kashgar for instance42 - Malleson began to put out feelers into Central Asia and to send from them saboteurs to disrupt Russian communications.43 Local committees, Khans, Amirs and governors general in Persia and Russia, disposed to contest the control of Central Asia with the Bolsheviks, were put on Malleson's payroll.44 So far had the process of penetration gone that in August 1918 Malleson made the startling proposal that the British

40 See PRO CAB 27/24, Eastern Committee, 16th Meeting, 24 June, 'British Policy in Afghanistan and Turkestan' (attached). Wilson developed this plan after receiving favourable intelligence from India. See, for instance, PRO CAB 27/25, EC 71, CGS Simla to DMI, 2 April 1918; and EC 72, CGS Simla to DMI, 3 April 1918. See also other relevant communications in CAB 27/28. 41 PRO WO 106/56, 'Operations June 1918-April 1919'. 42 Mensheviks in Tashkent had recently driven the local Bolsheviks back to Orenburg, their stronghold thereafter. Kashgar, while in Chinese Turkestan, was a long-established British 'window' on Russian Central Asia. The British agent in Tashkent was the famous Colonel-Bailey. 43 See, for example, PRO CAB 27/24, Eastern Committee, 17th Meeting, 1 July 1918. About the sabotage, at least, London was advised. After June, Redl's agents were operating in Russia in an attempt to destroy the Trans-Caspian railway on order of the Indian Office. See PRO CAB 27/28, EC 641, India Office to Viceroy, 26 June 1918. 44 See, for example, PRO WO 106/55, 'Proposed Subsidy to GG of Khorassan'; WO 106/56, 'Despatches from India', for Malleson's dealing with Merv, Tashkent, etc.; and, WO 106/61, 'Central Asia-Turkestan', for relations with Bokhara. The most promising, perhaps, of these local allies was the Menshevik Trans-Caspian Government in Tashkent with which Malleson signed a treaty on 22 August 1918. WO 106/61, 'Text of Agreement with the Trans-Caspian Government', August 1918.

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should absorb the Tashkent government entirely by taking on the burden of paying its employees. As was usually the case, when actually consulted, HMG balked at so formal an intervention - even though the army had already advanced the government of the Turkestan Union two million rubles for precisely this purpose.45 Of course, this was not the only such payment, and by the end of the war in Europe, Britain had become the paymaster of most of the anti-Bolshevik forces in Russian Turkestan - though it had refused actually to become so and acted as such only through local intermediaries.

Of course, agents and subsidies did not constitute the entirety of British intervention in Central Asia. Anglo-Indian forces under Malleson's command were pushed forward, and by June 1918 had come into contact with the Bolsheviks both along the Persian frontier and within Russian Central Asia, while co-operating with local allies in the creation of reliable - which is to say White - polities.46 Malleson's interventionist vanguards, by this time, were operating in approximately Brigade strength on the Russian side of the frontier. In London, the Eastern Committee continued to debate the advisa- bility of having a man in Tashkent.47

While the Eastern Committee talked, British forces in Central Asia fought the advancing Bolsheviks, and by September had seemingly halted the Bolshevik advance towards Tashkent near Kaahka.48 When this news reached London, Macdonough, at least, was delighted. By July 1918, he had abandoned all pretence and was saying quite plainly that Britain's regional enemy was neither the Turks nor the Germans per se, but rather the Bolsheviks who, victorious, would simply hand the country over to the Germans.49 It is only fair to say that all of this was apparently also much to the satisfaction of most of the inhabitants of the region, who confidently looked upon the British as their saviours from the Bolsheviks - a fact of which Macdonough was, perhaps, too well aware.o5

It was at this juncture that the Indian army made its bid for control - or rather that the Commander-in-Chief India attempted to absorb the Persian theatre entirely and to constitute his own staff as some sort of parallel War Office responsible for the war east of Mesopotamia. It was not that Monro was unhappy with what the generals were doing, rather that he was not satis- fied that sufficient control was being exercised by London in an area which, by his reading, was more properly India's concern than Britain's.51 Monro, there-

45 PRO CAB 27/24, Eastern Committee, 24th Meeting, 13 August 1918; and CAB 27/29, Commander-in-Chief India to War Office, 19 July 1918. 46 See, for example, PRO WO 95/55, 'Situation of General Malleson's Force in East Persia', etc. 47 PRO CAB 27/27, EC 538, 14 June 1918. 48 PRO WO 106/56, 'Operations June 1918-April 1919'. See also the minutes of the Eastern Committee for September 1918 in PRO CAB 27/24, and communications received by the Eastern Committee at this time in CAB 27/26 and CAB 27/30. 49 PRO WO 106/60, Macdonough to Tyrell, 13 July 1918. 50 Ibid., 24 July 1918. 51 PRO CAB 27/31, EC 1295, Commander-in-Chief India to War Office, 21 August 1918. See

also, CAB 27/32, EC 1564, Cecil to Balfour, 15 September 1918; EC 1565, Smuts, 'The Military

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fore, wanted to appoint a subordinate commander, responsible in the first instance to himself, competent to command all British and Indian forces in Persia and Russian Central Asia.

The first fruit of Monro's proposal was the formal division of the theatre into a western half under Dunsterville, controlled by Mesopotamia Command, and an eastern half under Malleson, responsible to India.52 When Monro persisted in playing for control, he was opposed by the War Office on the grounds that such an arrangement would simply create an eastern replica of the War Office, without sufficient understanding of or access to the 'big picture'.53 The CIGS, Wilson, unwilling to countenance a reduction of his own bailiwick, attacked the Monro proposal on the grounds that:

The fact is that the course of operations in the last month has clearly shown that unity of command does exist in its highest form and that no change is necessary. India is really in the position of a subordinate command holding a sector of the line. She should be content with answering for her own front without embarrassing the supreme command by attracting undue attention to herself, while continuing to forward her surplus resources into the general pool.54

Wilson's overriding conclusion, however, was that Monro needed a change of climate and responsibility, and India a new Commander-in-Chief with a more limited conception of the role he should play in the war.

Two facts of interest stand out in the 'unity of command' controversy. The first is that, on the surface, the Monro proposal was quite reasonable on military grounds. There was, perhaps, a Corps-worth of troops operating in Persia and Central Asia without, despite the protests of London, their being under adequate control. There was no co-ordination of effort; there was no general guiding policy - unless, that is, one considers creeping anti-Bolshevik activity 'unity of command in its highest form'. Perhaps Wilson did. If this was so, then the best that could be said of 'unity of command in its highest form' was that it allowed the army to pursue a 'forward' policy of its own, largely because, from the myriad of details and detachments, the War Cabinet could hardly be expected to produce anything like a coherent general policy. The second fact that stands out is that in arguing that Persia should be theirs, both Wilson and, conversely, Monro, were acting even more than usual like bureaucratic managers rather than military leaders. This was not an argument about principle, but a turf war between rival departments.

Command in the Middle East', 16 September 1918; EC 1630, 'Note by the Indian Office on the Suggested Appointment of the DCIGS for the East', 21 September 1918. Cecil and Smuts, in these papers, echo the Indian position on the unity of command question.

52 PRO CAB 27/31, EC Commander-in-Chief India to War Office, 30 August 1918. 53 PRO WO 106/64, 'Some Notes on a Proposal for Unity of Command in the Middle East', 14 October 1918. See further for Monro's assessment: G. Barrow, The Life of General Sir Charles Monro (London 1931). Monro's papers in the National Army Museum are of little interest in connection with this controversy. They can be found in NAM, Monro Papers, 7207/19. 54 PRO WO 106/64, 'Unity of Command in Eastern Theatre of War'.

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Whatever the case, given the pattern of British intervention in the region, it is probably fortunate that an omni-competent Lieutenant-General was never sent out, because the first result of the creation of such a command would almost certainly have been the rationalization of the existing policy of percolation and influence into a demand for more troops, and the adoption of a more formal and more forward policy in Persia, the Caucasus and Central Asia.ss It is probable that the only limiting factor in such an expansion would have been the fact that, by August 1918, there were as many British forces operating in Persia as existing communications could maintain.56 Thus, perhaps, the Indian mania for schemes of railroad construction.

Had there been a decision to intervene in Eastern Persia and Central Asia? No more than in Western Persia and the Caucasus; although in the east the slide towards intervention was produced as much by the fixed determination of the Indian army to follow an interventionist policy as by the daily decisions of its commander on the ground, Malleson.

And so the war ended with British and Indian troops in control of much of Persia and large parts of Russian Central Asia, and with contacts established and alliances formed with most of the anti-Bolshevik forces within reach. The end of the war in Europe - which had, theoretically, been the raison d'etre for

peripheral strategies in the first place - was scarcely noticed and had little effect on what had become on-going operations. In fact, only Curzon seems to have grasped the fact that the collapse of the German army in the west under- mined the basis upon which eastern strategy had been founded in theory.57 This was largely because, from the first, regional operations had been directed

by the army as much against the existing Bolshevik as the potential German

enemy, so that when the German menace evaporated, the Bolsheviks slid

readily into a threat assessment that had, in truth, been prepared with them

largely in mind.58 The Cabinet desire to lay the groundwork for a peripheral war in the east had become caught up in the army's desire to wage war on what it perceived to be Britain's Russian enemy. It may be that many in the Cabinet tacitly approved; others may have been deceived by all the strategic rhetoric in the air. Whatever the case, troops sent out as the vanguard of forces intended to contain the Germans were pushed into advanced positions by the action of regional commanders. Similarly, commitments were made with a

55 Consider, for instance, the cases of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the North Russian intervention. In each of these instances, the creation of an all-powerful regional Staff had precisely this result. 56 PRO CAB 27/31, Viceroy to Army Department, 9 August 1918. 57 Apprised of the engagement fought between Malleson's troops and the Trans-Caspian Bolsheviks around Kaakha, Curzon simply commented that the 'main object in this theatre had been achieved, namely the prevention of a Turkish or German advance across the Caspian. Any fighting in Trans-Caspia was now of purely local significance.' PRO CAB 23/8, WC 489, 18 October 1918. 58 See, for example, PRO CAB 25/27, 'Situation in Central Asia', General Staff Memorandum, 20 August 1919. This memo could quite easily have been written two years previously and

up-dated entirely to meet the vastly altered conditions of the day by deleting 'German' and substi-

tuting 'Bolshevik' when reference is made to the prospective enemy.

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multitude of anti-Bolshevik local polities more concerned with annihilating the Bolsheviks than fighting the Germans. In the process, war policy in theory had come to bear little resemblance to operations in fact. Reconnaissance on the periphery of the emerging Grossdeutschland had become only what it had always been in potential - intervention far into the interior of the collapsing Russian Empire.

The story of the British intervention in North Russia is much better known than that of intervention in Persia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Indeed, it would be fair to say that the deployment of British troops to Archangel and Murmansk has become the classic expression of intervention. While this is so, the intervention in the north is no better understood than is its southern counterpart. Once again, this is because the dynamic that brought British soldiers to the far north, and sent them into action against the Bolsheviks, is ignored.

The movement to Archangel and Murmansk derived from the Poole Mission to Russia in winter 1917. Strangely enough, the Poole Mission named after its commander General Poole - was intended not as a probe to sound out the situation, but as a straightforward attempt to disengage British citizens and British resources from a faltering Russian war effort. In fact, Poole understood his task rather differently; or rather, he allowed his purpose to be confounded with his prejudices. Even before his return in March 1918, Poole seems to have convinced himself that the only way in which Britain could disengage from Russia was by the paradoxical method of intervention in the north. In order to withdraw from North Russia, that is, he thought that Britain must first increase its commitment. Thus he advised the War Cabinet and thus the army came to concur. The Cabinet, probably confused, decided to consider sending some troops and ships to Archangel 'with a view to present or future emergencies'.59 The 'future emergency' the Cabinet had in mind was a German advance from Finland - a contingency, it turned out, without much substance before September 1918, and probably never very realistic; though one that Macdonough, at least, was never disposed to neglect, if only because of its utility as an argument for northern intervention.60

At the end of December 1917, the British mission to Russia was withdrawn, though Poole and some of his personnel stayed behind to monitor develop- ments.61 In the ensuing months, travelling all across the country, these officers

59 PRO CAB 23/3, WC 289, 3 December 1917. 60 For the German threat from Finland, see PRO WO 106/607, 'Finland June 1918-May 1919'; PRO WO 106/608, 'Finland - Political June 1918-June 1919'; PRO WO 106/690, 'Finland: General Information Received'; and PRO WO 106/1152, 'Russia. Military and Political Corres- pondence January-October 1918'. For the British mission to Finland after the end of the war, see NAM, 6111-93-3, Gough Baltic Mission, 'Diary, Manuscript Report and Instructions for Baltic Mission'. 61 PRO CAB 23/3, WC 306, 26 December 1917.

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got into everything and saw everything and, sent out to consider how to extract British assets, continued to argue energetically that the time was ripe for intervention.62 One of them, Lieutenant Lessing, for instance, penetrated into certain pro-German Jewish organizations in Moscow and seemed, a worried British ambassador informed London, 'to be working on some policy unknown to us'. This was more alarming because, when asked by the British Military Attache, Lessing simply informed him that 'he [had] been sent out by [the] British Government to report on [the] situation in Russia'. 'This is one of Poole's brave boys', the DMI noted on the border of the telegram, not at all nonplussed that a Lieutenant seemed to be engaged in making high policy -

surely a rather strange interpretation of his terms of reference.63 Another of Poole's agents, Captain MacAlpine, was in secret contact with Red Finns anxious to obtain British assistance in expelling Mannerheim and his German friends from their country.64 Others were in Omsk, Baku, Murmansk, Archangel and Krasniyarsk. Poole, meanwhile, remained in Petrograd corre- sponding furiously with the DMI.

In the winter months, of course, no deployment to Northern Russia was practical, and so the allied politicians safely dithered,65 eventually reaching the startling conclusion that the question of a northern intervention merited serious study.66 By spring 1918, however, with the ice clearing, operations became a possibility, and the army began to think seriously about sending just such a force as Poole advised; not, however, for the purpose for which he had argued in the winter, but for those to which he had turned in the spring. Far from permitting the British to withdraw their assets, the DMI now considered that the proper purpose for such a deployment would be to deny Russia's north coast to the Germans, and to support the local Whites against the Bolsheviks.67 It is probable that the 'smash and grab' policy, at least in Macdonough's mind, had always been a blind.

In deciding for intervention in the north, the army, for once, was not alone. At the Abbeville Conference in May 1918, the allied leadership wrestled with the question, and decided that an intervention at Murmansk and Archangel would be a good idea. The political rationale of the allies, however, was different from the rationale of the British army. At Abbeville, the purpose of a movement to North Russia was restricted to getting the Serbs and Czechs west of Omsk out through these ports.68

Armed with this decision - superimposed upon its own ideas - the army decided, later in the month, to send Poole back to Russia, not at the head

62 PRO WO 106/1150, 'General Poole's Mission. Personnel. January to May 1918'. 63 PRO WO 106/1150, op. cit., Lockhard to WO, 29 April 1918. 64 PRO WO 106/1150, op. cit., McAlpine to Rusplycome, 15 March 1918. 65 See, for instance, PRO CAB 28/1, Minutes of an Allied Conference in London, 16 March 1918. 66 PRO CAB 28/3, Allied Conference in London, 16 March 1918. 67 PRO WO 106/1149, 'Notes on Murmansk', 28 April 1918. 68 PRO CAB 28/4, IC vol IV, Summary of Conclusions, May 1919.

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of a fact-finding mission, but as the commander of an expeditionary force intended:

1. to effect the removal of British war materials and personnel from Russia; 2. to prevent the Germans from mobilizing the war resources of Russia; 3. to carry away from Russia the Czech Legion, then attempting to wend its

way towards the northern ports on the Trans-Siberian railway; 4. to defend the Murmansk coast against a potential Germano-Finn

advance.69

In execution, British policy was rather more ambitious. This was not only because General Poole had been given more comprehensive terms of reference by the army than might have been expected given the decisions made at the Abbeville Conference, but because, as usual, he himself had already decided on a more 'forward' policy than a strict interpretation of the purpose for his intervention merited. Poole, in short, seems to have determined on nothing less than the destruction of the Bolshevik revolution. He intended to use his force, not to further Britain's temporary and local interests but, as he explained to Wilson soon after arriving in Russia at the head of a force, 'to raise the cross' against the Bolsheviks throughout North Russia.70 This was also how Poole instructed his own subordinates. The purpose of the British force, Poole told them, was to raise the country against the Bolsheviks, and having defeated them, to link up with the Czechs and recreate an Eastern Front against the Germans!71 This was surely a rather drastic progression from the intentions of the allied leadership, and even from those of Poole's own military superiors! No one in London seems to have taken umbrage or even much notice. Such, once again, was the dynamic that made for intervention.

The first British troops arrived in Archangel and Murmansk in June, followed in July by the bulk of the fighting forces - something like an all- allied Brigade in 'Syren Force' in Murmansk, commanded by Poole's local deputy, Major-General Maynard,72 with a similar deployment to Archangel in the shape of 'Elope Force', commanded by Poole himself.

Their reception by the local authorities, following instructions from Moscow, was frosty but pacific. 'As is to be expected', Poole informed the DMI, 'this leaves me cold.' Poole feared that local disorders might make it necessary to launch a local coup.73 None of this is surprising given what had

69 PRO CAB 25/18, 'The Present Situation in Russia, March 1918', General Staff MIO, 22 May 1918. These are also the reasons given for British deployment in PRO WO 106/1147, 'Notes on North Russia' (undated). 70 IWM HHW 2/10B/3, Poole to Wilson, 2 July 1918. 71 PRO WO 106/1164, 'Allied Forces, Archangel District, Northern Russia, Report on Operations, 1 October 1918-26 May 1919', Ironside, 12 June 1919. 72 See PRO WO 95/5419, 'North Russia'; PRO WO 95/5423, 'Elope Force'; PRO WO 95/5422, 'Miscellaneous Forces, North Russia'; PRO WO 95/5424, 'Syren Force'; and PRO WO 106/1151, 'Elope and Syren Force. Nominal Role of Officers'. 73 PRO WO 106/1153, 'Archangel and Murmansk, Telegrams and Correspondence, 1918 May-1919 May', Poole to DMI, 16 May 1918.

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Joumal of Contemporary History Vol 33 No 2

gone before. Nor is what followed. By August, Poole was in close contact with the local Russian military commanders who suggested that the opportunity afforded by the allied presence be taken to crush the local Soviets. Early in September, very probably encouraged by Poole - if his earlier correspondence with the DMI is anything to go by - taking the initiative, they did just that, packing off the government of the Northern Provinces to internment on Solovetski Island. Though the British ambassador protested against this action, there was nothing to be done, except, by November, to take over as paymaster to the emergent local White government - a Socialist Revolutionary Provisional Government under President Tchaikovski, domi- nated by the British occupation authorities and their associates in the Russian National Army.74 Indeed, such protest as the Foreign Office might have made could only have been muted by the fact that Poole was not only, in all probability, the moving spirit behind the coup, but had already put forward the plan, through Geddes, of overcoming the local Bolsheviks and advancing on Petrograd and Moscow.75 Poole, in fact, had already begun to move south from Murmansk and Archangel.76 Faced with this reality, the allies anted up the six Battalions Poole was requesting, and the four Maynard thought that he required, while each began to collect such local forces as presented themselves - Serbs and Red Finns at Murmansk,77 Poles and White Russians at Archangel.78 Eventually, Poole's force would blossom into something rather

74 PRO WO 106/1147, 'Notes on North Russia' (undated). 75 PRO CAB 28/4, 2nd Meeting, 7th Supreme War Council, Versailles, 3 July 1918. 76 PRO WO 106/1162, 'Appreciation of Situation in North Russia', 9 September 1918. 77 Syren Force was organized by General Maynard into a number of Columns and Brigades. A 'column' of Royal Marines was deployed to Murmansk itself ('Marine Force'); and a 'column' based on a Battalion of the Sussex Regiment operated from Petchanga ('Petchanga Force'). Meanwhile, the 236th Brigade was composed of two British, an Italian, and a French 'column' -

each based upon something like a reinforced Company operating with local Whites. 237th Brigade, similarly, was composed of two Serbian and three Karelian 'columns'. In total, Syren Force came to contain rather more than four British, an Italian, a Serbian and a French Infantry Battalion - including Russian auxiliaries, rather more than a Division. As in the Caspian Sea, there was also a local lake fleet run by the Royal Navy, and as in the Caspian Sea, this was the dominant naval reality in the region. See PRO WO 95/5424, op. cit.; PRO WO 106/1149, 'Notes on Murmansk'; and PRO WO 106/1147, 'Notes on North Russia' (undated). Eventually there were 5100 British, 550 French, 1140 Italian, 1120 Serbian, 720 American, 3680 Karelian, and 1250 Finnish soldiers in Syren Force, supported by several thousand members of the Russian National Army and other local auxiliary forces, to a total of about 15,000 all ranks. 78 At Archangel, there came to be eight Battalions of British infantry with support troops; a 'Slavo-British Legion' of something like Brigade size, composed of Russian troops under British instruction, with various attachments (including three armoured trains, and a Chinese labour Company!); a locally-raised detachment of the French Foreign Legion; the 'Russian National Army' was composed of eight Rifle Regiments with support arms; a Battalion-size Polish Legion and a Regiment of American Infantry. The total number of troops in Archangel came to something like a Corps based on an Allied Division. Many of these troops, however - including the Americans - were of suspect quality. See PRO WO 95/5419, op. cit.; and PRO WO 106/1147, 'Notes on North Russia' (undated). Eventually, there were 7900 British, 1200 French, 4900 American, 30 Italian, 400 French Foreign Legion, 260 Poles and nearly 20,000 Russians of the

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more than a Corps - about 50,000 men of all ranks and all types at Murmansk and Archangel, 13,000 of them British. The policy which this force was used to further was, as always, Poole's own and bore little resemblance to that which had, in theory, predicated the dispatch of Poole's force.

Was there a decision to intervene? Indeed there was. A decision to go in, withdraw British assets, embark the Czechs, and then withdraw. In execution, Poole's intervention was rather different. When the British forces in Archangel and Murmansk were withdrawn in 1919, British assets were still in place and were destroyed. The Czechs, far from being taken out through the northern ports, had become part of a shadow plan for the destruction of Bolshevism. Surely the Generals - Wilson, Macdonough and Poole - were not the only ones to notice that, if the forces in the north moved south to link up with Czechs coming from Siberia, more would have been accomplished than the retrieval of a few Divisions for the Western Front.79 But even the failure of the projected link-up did not change British policy. Similarly, the army claimed to have been worried about a German advance from Finland. Of course, this advance never materialized. But even the withdrawal of Germans from Finland had no effect upon British policy in North Russia, because by the time it occurred, the intervention was already well under way. Once again, none of this should surprise. Neither defence against the Germans nor the salvage of the Czechs through the northern ports had been the true reason for the movement north. When the army documents are examined, this becomes clear. When the Cabinet papers are consulted, it seems cloudy. It is probable that the primary function of these other desiderata was justification of an interventionist policy rather than the true grounds for such a policy. As we have seen, the Cabinet did decide to intervene in the north, but this resolution overlay an earlier army disposition to move against its Russian enemies through the northern ports - this itself partly contingent upon Poole's skewed advice. In execution, Poole's intervention was even more ambitious than that planned by the army, and bore even less resemblance to the 'smash and grab and re- embark' on which the Supreme War Council had originally decided to send him. Once again individual and corporate preference had altered policy to the extent that a difference in emphasis had become a difference in kind.

Whatever the case, with the end of the war in the west, all rationale for intervention ended. This was clear to the army, at least, and in the case of the northern ports the army was not prepared to let the situation change tacitly into one of intervention by default, and for unclear goals - perhaps because deployment here was on a larger scale than elsewhere, and because the troops involved were British rather than Indian, and therefore a charge on the army rather than the Indian establishment. What was required, the army thought, was a decision. If the intervention was recognized for what it was, then it

Slavo-British Legion and Russian National Army around Archangel, for a total strength for 'Elope' force of something like 35,000 all ranks.

79 PRO WO 106/1162, op. cit.

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could remain, and indeed, be expanded; if there was no political will to define its purpose, then it should be ended. 'With the anticipated disappearance of the German menace', one of Macdonough's deputies wrote in October 1918,

... our original pretext for intervention in Russia, i.e. the encouragement of continued military resistance to the Central Powers vanishes. From the purely military point of view there is no longer any immediate object to be gained by the retention of forces in Russia.

If the intervention is continued, it must be directed either against Bolshevism pure and simple, or towards eliminating every trace of German influence. In this connection it must be remembered that Russia is honeycombed with German influences and whatever may be the fate of Germany, it is certain that these influences will long continue an integral part of Russian life. It is also certain that in whatever direction they are employed they will continue to be inimical to our interests from this point in connection with the defence of India and our

position in the East. But the continuation of intervention is for the Allied Governments to decide. The decision

lies between one of two policies: either the withdrawal of our forces, in which case Russia must seethe through prolonged anarchy to a stable Government, or an attempt to hasten the restoration of such a Government by every means in our power.80

Wilson, by this time, firmly agreed.81 The time for ambiguous combinations had passed. Great things had been promised from this intervention; they had not materialized. The Russian auxiliaries, meanwhile, were becoming restive, and the allied troops acting besides the British, little better than useless. The local commanders - Maynard and Poole - on the other hand, pressed not

only for retention of the northern toe-hold 'at all costs', but also for reinforcement and the adoption of a nakedly anti-Bolshevik policy.82 The War Cabinet decision - or rather indecision - came on 14 November 1918, three days after the end of the war. It was decided that Britain would retain possession of Murmansk and Archangel and - a decision confirmed at the end of December

there would be no reinforcement. The intervention in the north thereafter

continued as a strategic orphan.83 A year later, Wilson's friend, General

80 PRO WO 106/1166, 'Allied Policy in Russia Consequent on the German Collapse with

Special Reference to the Disposition of Allied Forces in the North', Colonel R. Steel, MO 5, 13 October 1918. The keystone to this reassessment can be found in estimates of the German situation: PRO CAB 25/79, 'Present Situation of the German Armies', 30 October 1918, for instance. The use of the word 'pretext' in the passage cited, probably unintentional, is revealing. 81 PRO WO 106/1167, 'North Russia', Wilson memorandum, 2 January 1919. 82 PRO WO 106/1167, 'Future Policy in North Russia', 2 January 1919. 83 See, in addition to war diaries and other sources indicated above, Ironside's very concise

report in PRO WO 106/1164, 'Allied Forces, Archangel District, Northern Russia, Report on

Operations, 1 October 1918-26 May 1919', 12 June 1919. See also the following published sources: A Chronicler, Archangel. The American War with Russia (Chicago 1924); C. Halliday, The Ignorant Armies. The Anglo-American Archangel Expedition (London 1961); E. Ironside, Archangel 1918-1919 (London 1953); C. Maynard, The Murmansk Venture (London 1920); A.

Soutar, With Ironside in Russia (London 1940); S. Ward, With the Diehards in Siberia (London 1920); and P. Burnem, 'The Australians in Northern Russia', Sabretache, XXII, 4 (August 1976), 266-79. For the recollection of participant soldiers, see items in the collection of the NAM. For

instance: NAM 6602-68, 'North Russia Expeditionary Force 1918-1919. Recollections by A/Sgt E.S. Virpsha'; and NAM 6302/61, 'Letters from Trevor Garston to his Mother from Murmansk'.

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Rawlinson, was dispatched to wind up what had become a purposeless and

embarrassing distraction.

The allied intervention in Siberia, happily for the British, was more a French, and as much an American and Japanese initiative, as a specifically British effort. The process by which it was set in action was simple. For some time the western allies had been racking their brains to come up with a scheme by which Japanese forces could be fruitfully and willingly employed in helping to win the war. Some of the schemes were impractical; others were not acceptable to the Japanese; still others failed due to western unwillingness to pay the price the Japanese were asking. In December 1917, it occurred to the French that the Japanese might be willing to intervene in Siberia, with the ultimate aim of assisting in the re-establishment of an Eastern Front. At the Paris Conference in December, the idea was put to the Japanese, and while reluctant, they did not reject it out of hand.84 The problem was less the Japanese than the Americans, who could not be reconciled to the idea. By March, while the Japanese and Americans remained unenthusiastic, the British and the French had succeeded in persuading themselves and each other, at least, of the merits of the scheme. One thing they had not settled, however, was the fate of the Czechs. Initially it was Britain's position that they should remain to form the nucleus of an allied army in Siberia.85 Clemenceau, however, was not inclined to agree. He insisted that they were required in France. And so the four-cornered debate continued. Eventually, the British view of the Czech role prevailed, and the Americans gradually moved from a position of opposing Japanese movement to Siberia, to one in which they agreed to go along to keep the Japanese honest.86

In any case, London's thinking, as in the case of the other interventions, derived largely from the private policy of a military observer - in this case, the one-time British Military Attache to Russia, Colonel, later General, Knox.

In spring 1918, Knox returned from Russia, and began to push almost immediately for a massive intervention in Siberia and elsewhere, aimed at re-establishing a viable Eastern Front, while concurrently saving the country from the Bolsheviks. His first contribution to the debate was a memorandum in which he claimed that, not only were foreign troops required to stabilize the situation in Russia, but that Japanese troops were especially desired by the natives.87 All the familiar strategic arguments were revisited. If left to enjoy its victory, Germany would organize Russia economically. Allied planning for

84 See relevant documents in PRO CAB 28/3. 85 PRO CAB 28/3, Minutes from the meeting of the War Cabinet, 28 May 1918 (Pichon, Cambon and Clemenceau in attendance). 86 Ibid. 87 About this, the army at least, was unconvinced, though it was confused. Macdonough seems to have believed, concurrently, that Japanese intervention would alienate every sort of Russian, and that it would provide a distraction for the Germans. Surely these are contradictory conclusions, particularly given the earlier judgment on Bolshevik-German unity of identity. See PRO WO 106/983, 'Japanese Intervention', 14 February 1918.

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economic warfare would become only so much nonsense. German troops would - apparently simultaneously - flow back to the west and invade India.88 Other memos followed, the arguments similar, the nearly hysterical tone identical.89 In London, at the crucial Anglo-French conference at which the decision was made to send a joint appeal to President Wilson advocating Japanese intervention, Knox spoke to great effect. The situation in Russia, he warned, was not irretrievable, as the Germans had miscalculated the speed and degree of Russian collapse as badly as had Russia's western allies. Immediate and large-scale intervention - and that alone - Knox argued, might yet save the situation.90

The army was inclined to agree, although it continued to view the Siberian intervention in the larger context of an attempt to crush the Bolsheviks via a

link-up at the railway junction at Vologda with the already projected movement from the north. Once again, the War Cabinet avoided having to make a decision by passing the matter on to the Imperial War Cabinet and Supreme War Council.

By June 1918, the Imperial War Cabinet had discussed the situation in the

light of evidence presented by Macdonough, and gave approval for intervention in Siberia, aiming to assist the Russians in expelling the Germans; keep the Russians in the war; shorten the war;91 prevent the isolation of Russia from the west; and deny to Germany the supplies of Western Siberia, and the stores in Russian ports (i.e. Vladivostock). British military policy for 1919 was constructed accordingly.92

Similarly, in July, at a meeting of the Supreme War Council, the Japanese agreed to send a large force to Siberia if the Americans approved.93 They did, and President Wilson finally gave the go-ahead to an American deployment in September.94

88 PRO CAB 25/48, GT-3927, 'The Present Situation in Russia', 13 March 1917. Also in War Office files, in PRO WO 106/1098. 89 PRO WO 106/1098, 'General Knox's Report and Attendance at Versailles Conference

Regarding Expedition to Archangel', 16 March 1918; 'Possibility of a Guerrilla War in Russia', 5 March 1918; 'The Delay in the East', 18 March 1918, etc. At this time, among others, Knox was seconded in his assessment by the ubiquitous Amery, author of PRO CAB 25/87, 'Future Military Policy', 22 May 1918 and 'War Aims and Military Policy', 15 June 1918. 90 PRO CAB 28/3, Allied Conference in London, 16 March 1918. This was not Knox's first

appearance before the Cabinet. In autumn 1917, he had been back in London to give counsel

regarding the impending collapse of the Russian armies. See PRO CAB 23/4, WC 229, 7

September 1917, etc. This suggestion for a common Anglo-French line to the Americans appears, in fact, to have originated with Macdonough. See PRO WO 106/983, 'Russia, Rumania, Caucasus, and Persia 1918', 'Note for Colonel Pagalde', 21 February 1918. 91 'They are advised that, unless the Russian front is reconstituted, there is no reasonable

probability of such a superiority over the enemy being concentrated by the Allies as will ensure a

victory on the Western Front in 1919'. PRO CAB 23/41, IWC 22, 28 June 1918. 92 See, for example, PRO CAB 25/84, 'The Campaign of 1919', 26 July 1918; and PRO CAB

25/85, 'British Military Policy 1918-1919', Wilson Memorandum, 25 July 1918. 93 PRO CAB 28/4, 'IC Vol IV, Summary of Conclusions'. 94 See PRO WO 106/1233, 'Knox Messages, August-October 1918', 67147, WO to Knox, 26

September 1918.

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There is no reason to suspect that either the Imperial War Cabinet or the Supreme War Council were being hypocritical or naive in setting out these desiderata or planning this deployment; rather, it was a simple fact that if an Eastern Front were to be re-established, there really was no alternative to a movement eastward from Vladivostock. Such a strategy was all the more attractive for the western allies since it could be accomplished largely by troops - the Japanese and Czechs - which might not otherwise be engaged. None of this detracts, however, from the reality that British policy derived from a climate catalysed by the perceptions of one man - Knox - and that the Siberian intervention in execution, like the others, became almost entirely an anti-Bolshevik crusade rather than a realistic attempt to contain German expansion.

In April 1918, the first Japanese troops arrived in Vladivostock alongside a small force of Royal Marines. In August, following the Japanese decision to increase their force substantially, the western allies agreed to contribute forces of their own: 7000 Americans, 3500 British and 300 each of Italians and French. The Japanese were to land 12,500 men, and have command.95 And so they did, although in the event it was the commander of the French contingent, General Janin, who was given the command in November 1918 rather than his Japanese counterpart.96 Munitions in large quantities were dispatched from the west to arm the immense Russian armies that the allies were confident they could raise, and to rearm the Czechs who, it had been decided, would serve best by staying in Siberia.97 By the end of the war, the British were promising to train and supply 200,000 men.98 And soon after the arrival of interventionist forces, a White Siberian government emerged, acting as the local life-support for an army (Kornilov's) - both funded by the allies - and this government quickly embarked on a series of coups which saw it become steadily more con- servative and dependent upon the allies.99

Meanwhile, the commander of the line of communications troops in Siberia, the man responsible for the training of the White forces and the local commander with complete veto power on the employment of British troops, was none other than General Knox, seconded from his position as the chief British Military Representative, and reaping the fruits of his notoriety.100 It is no surprise that, almost immediately upon his arrival, Knox began to press for the employment of more troops, for more formal relations with the White committees, and for the adoption of a 'forward' policy, which, he insisted, was

95 PRO CAB 25/48, 'The Japanese Role in the Intervention in Siberia', Memorandum by the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, 15 October 1918. 96 PRO WO 106/1232, 'Instruction to Knox', August-December 1918. 97 See PRO WO 106/679, 'Supplies for Czech Armies'; see particularly 'Statement of Supplies Shipped to Vladivostock', August 1918. 98 Ibid. 99 See PRO WO 106/1233, 'Knox Messages, August-October 1918', especially 64916 cypher, Knox to WO, 23 August 1918. 100 PRO WO 106/1232, 'Instruction to Knox', August-December 1918.

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essential for British prestige in the region following the disaster at Baku.'" Nor is it surprising that Macdonough concurred with his assessment, as did Wilson, the CIGS - both, incidentally, hoping for great things from this intervention. 02

Despite all the fire and fury - at least in London and Paris - the truth is that the Siberian intervention was a non-starter. It was not properly under way before the German collapse deprived it of politically acceptable purpose. The native population, moreover - whatever Knox might have argued once did not trust the Japanese. In fact, it was common knowledge, the Czech commander, General Gaida, warned, that the Japanese were only in Siberia to weaken a traditional enemy (was there ever any doubt?).103 The Americans, Italians and French, for their part, as in the Archangel and Murmansk adventures, plainly did not wish to be there, particularly after the war in Europe had ended. The British, by themselves, were insufficient in strength to have much effect. The Czechs were tired of Siberia, discouraged by the absence of support from their allies and wanted to go home.104 By the time the war ended in Europe, they were in full retreat.105 The local Whites, meanwhile, never came up to the mark, when they were not an acute embarrassment.106 By the end, the Siberian enterprise - which was to have been decisive - had become just another British intervention. While the British went through the motions of fighting the Bolsheviks, the weary Czechs floated to the rear and the other allied contingents skulked in and around Vladivostock, more vigilant in keeping an eye on each other than in combating the Bolsheviks.107

What can be learned from the Siberian episode? For our purposes, the chief

101 See, for instance, PRO WO 106/61, 'Central Asia-Turkestan', Knox to DMI, 30 September 1918. 102 PRO WO 106/1162, 'Appreciation of Situation in North Russia', 9 September 1918. Wilson thought that the Siberian intervention would become 'decisive' by spring 1919, when he intended to strike the blow that would win the war. 103 PRO CAB 25/48, 'The Japanese Role in the Intervention in Siberia', Memorandum by the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, 15 October 1918. They thought so with some justice. Colonel Kono of the Japanese General Staff informed the War Office, in February 1918, that it was Japan's intention to establish a puppet state east of the Urals, supported by Britain and Japan. This state was to include more than simply Asian Russia and much of occupied Central Asia. At a minimum, it would contain borders surrounding Baghdad-Persia- Afghanistan-North-West Frontier-Semipalashensk-Novonikovlaievsk-Tomsk. It would be the 'joint first line of defence of Japan and Great Britain against Germany'. PRO CAB 25/48, Colonel Kono to War Office, February 1918. 104 For the Czechs see PRO WO 106/680, 'Mission to Czechs'; PRO WO 106/682, 'Czech Army in Russia'; PRO WO 106/691, and 695, 'Czechs'. 105 See PRO WO 106/1233, 'Knox Messages, August-October 1918'; and PRO WO 106/ 1234, 'Knox Letters, September-November 1918' for the contributions of the various allied con-

tingents. 106 See, for example, PRO WO 106/1215, 'Military and Political, General Semionoff's Troops 1918 February-1919 November'; and Hopkirk's account of the Siberian intervention in Setting the East Ablaze (London 1984). 107 See, in addition to those sources indicated above, S. Ward, With the Diehards in Siberia 1920 (London, n.d.); and D. Knox, With the Russian Army 1914-1917 (London 1921).

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lesson is that, once again, British intervention flowed from a climate prevailing in London, and a policy produced very largely from a man on the ground operating through the institutional preferences and prejudices of the army. In this case, however, the intervention did not go through its full cycle: there was no reckless, and locally-produced forward policy, for instance; nor was policy dominance enjoyed by the man on the ground to the degree that it was elsewhere - though his views remained a powerful factor in the formulation of general policy. This was primarily because the British contingent in Siberia was only part of a greater allied force commanded by a French general, and there were other inputs aside from the dynamics which produced a specifically British intervention - inputs from nations which produced their strategy more rationally (which is to say, more formally) than did the British Empire. It is a shame - for our model, at least - that Knox was not given his head, or at least the supreme command, for if he had been, it is probable that the Siberian adventure would have become the most spectacular of them all.

How to summarize all this? Perhaps the best way is to justify some of the generalizations with which we began. In the first place, the intervention derived from a climate of opinion occasioned by a consensus that by 1919 the war would be very different from what it had been to date. Peripheral operations, it was thought, would be unavoidable and might well prove decisive; and therefore, many concluded, Britain must perforce prepare to fight a peripheral war. If this were not enough, many members of the political elite, and the army as a whole, viewed the emerging 'dictatorship of the proletariat' with disquiet and disgust. If, the army thought, in the making of a peripheral omelette a few Bolshevik bad eggs were broken, so much the better. The climate resulting from this combination of perception and prejudice resulted in the dispatch of various missions to gather intelligence and to report on the situation. Two of these probes, the Dunsterville and Poole Missions, ended in intervention. Another intervention, that in Siberia, followed largely from the assessment of a professional observer - General Knox, one-time attache to Russia. The Central Asian intervention, similarly, was put in train, in part, by the conversion of existing liaison missions into listening-posts and centres of espionage. In all cases, these observers acted within a military hierarchy both more convinced and more able to consider straightforward intervention than were the army's political masters. The reconnaissance conceived by the War Cabinet, therefore, as administered by the army, became steadily a shadow intervention. On the ground, finally, real policy was made by generals who reinterpreted the instructions they had received from their superiors in a more forward direction still. Whatever their reason for acting so, the dynamic remains, and it is a fact of significant import, for instance, that Dunsterville concentrated at Baku, Malleson crossed the border, and Poole moved south, either without or even contrary to the orders of their political and military superiors. Dispatched as observers, these generals invariably became com-

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manders; instructed to watch and advise, they rapidly came to collect, and then to employ regular forces, supplemented by such local forces as could be assembled. They did not observe; they fought. They did not advise; they administrated districts, launched coups, and placed their Russian and Persian friends on the British payroll. Once on the ground, they became, in effect, free agents who, in making policy for themselves, made it for their country as well. There was, in short, no master plan for intervention, nor even a real decision to intervene; rather there was a process by which a number of unco-ordinated, and sometimes contradictory, interventions occurred - not by intention, but by evolution from much humbler beginnings. The army proposed; the generals disposed; the War Cabinet, when informed, sometimes acquiesced. At every level, decision-makers acted, not as they should have, but as they might have been expected to, given the nature of their perceptions, their individual and corporate preferences and the character and limitations of the system in which they worked.

Once the intervention had occurred, it would have required uncommon resolution to wind up the resultant commitments and deployments - and this despite the fact that the theoretical basis for the intervention (the German advance, etc.) no longer existed. As there was no such resolution in London, there was nothing for it but to let the contradictions, inevitable in a policy which had outlived the conditions of its creation, take their course.

Perhaps the strangest thing about understanding the process leading to intervention is that, far from absolving the politicians of responsibility, such understanding places responsibility even more firmly on their shoulders - even though interventionist policies were more the fruit of political waffling than of hard-headed political choice. It is as pointless to blame the army for

acting as the bureaucracy it was, or the generals for exceeding such instructions as they received, as it is to blame a dog for slipping a slack lead. 'War', said Clemenceau, in his most famous bon mot, 'is too important to be left to Generals.' On the contrary; war is a general's business, and he should be left to

get on with it once the policy that sets him in motion has been clearly established. In the case of the interventions, such an executive policy was never determined, and the policy that resulted from the actions of the generals ruled

by default of policy by intention. In war, it is policy that should not be left to

generals; and it was policy the generals were making in Russia and Persia.

Brock Millman

is a Lecturer at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He is currently completing two manuscripts dealing with

Britain's war policy in the latter years of the first world war.

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