The Bloody White Baron (17 page)

Ungern almost certainly read it; one of his letters includes a brief precis of how ‘the principles of Talmud, preaching the tolerance of all and any means for the attainment of the goal afford the Jews a plan and method of activities in the destruction of nations and states',
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ideas straight from the ‘Protocols'. Their popularity received a considerable boost when the news came that Tsarina Alexandra had been reading a book by the anti-Semitic apocalyptic writer Sergius Nilus, which included the ‘Protocols', while in captivity. She had also etched a swastika, already recognised as an anti-Semitic symbol, on her window. This came as a ‘testament from on high' to many Whites. The tsarina's use of this Buddhist, esoteric and anti-Semitic symbol, which was also very common in Mongolia, would have thrilled Ungern.

The ‘Protocols' meshed well with Ungern's interest in esoteric Eastern religion. There are some striking examples of the two mirroring each other, such as the following two passages. The first is from the introduction to the original 1905 edition of the ‘Protocols', working imaginatively within both apocalyptic and conspiratorial traditions:

The second is from Ferdinand Ossendowski, a companion of Ungern in Mongolia, describing one of the Hidden Masters in Shambhala:

 

In the West, the malevolent power of the hidden Jewish king caused apocalyptic devastation; in the East, the benevolent power of the hidden Buddhist king plucked the world from the fires. It was not such a stretch to meld the two worldviews into a Manichean whole, the two hidden forces, light and dark, materialist and spiritual, clashing with each other behind the visible world as it lurched towards apocalypse. This image of a cosmic struggle, a battle between good and evil, would become the core of Ungern's beliefs.

Another anti-Semitic piece, the ‘Zunder Document', never achieved the same popularity as the ‘Protocols', but was even more widely distributed in Russia in 1919. It was a regular feature of White newspapers, and was alleged to have been taken from the body of a dead Jewish revolutionary leader named Zunder. The letter was a gloating testament to how ‘the Sons of Israel [. . .] stand on the threshold of leadership of the world' and that the Russian people were now ‘under the yoke of Jewish power'. Now the Jews had finally seized power, they should ‘show neither pity nor mercy' to the Russian people, a sentiment stressed throughout the letter.

The logical conclusion for many Whites was that the Jews should be shown no mercy in return. Such materials built on anti-Semitic feelings which were common among the Russian officer caste in particular, who saw Jews as soft, city-dwelling, and unmanly.
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It was this kind of propaganda, combined with the traditional anti-Semitism of the region, which caused the horrors of the White retreat across the Ukraine in late 1919. There, tens of thousands of Jews were slaughtered by vengeful White soldiers, especially by the Ukrainian Cossacks. Many of the most vehement anti-Semites came out of the Ukraine with the German armies, and went on to help drip the poison of Jew-hatred all over Europe. Ungern's Baltic German compatriots were particularly prominent among this new wave of anti-Semites, such as Fyodor Vinberg, who published lists of Jews supposedly
involved in the Bolshevik revolution, Max von Scheuber-Richter, an early financial backer of the Nazis, and the Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg, a veteran of the
Baltikum
.

Broadly speaking, traditional Russian thought about the Jews had been focused on exclusion, not extermination. It was based on Christian principles. The Jews had refused to accept Christ, and had killed him; they were therefore tainted as a people, and had to be kept away from good Christians, and reminded of their sin. Yet at the same time their existence was necessary for the fulfilment of biblical prophecy; they had to continue existing, persecuted and isolated, until Judgement Day. Traditional Russian imperial thinking followed these lines. The Jews' continued existence as a people had not been seriously threatened, but they were subject to literally hundreds of rules and restrictions, particularly concerning their settlement in Russian lands and their contact with ordinary Russians. These petty discriminations grew worse in the last years of the tsarist system, especially under the highly anti-Semitic Nikolas II. They could never be part of the wider Russian world, but remained eternally foreign.

For Ungern, however, the Jews were not merely tainted, but actively evil. Like many others, he was convinced that the driving force behind the Bolsheviks was essentially Jewish. They were constantly striving to corrupt society. Their evil could not be contained, but had to be eradicated, down to the roots. The revolution had been caused not only by their actions, but by their mere corrupting presence; they were the ‘sinners of the revolution'.
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He discussed this ‘important question' with another anti-Semitic White leader, Lieutenant-General Molchanov, in a heartfelt conversation during a downpour in Dauria. They, or at least Ungern, came to the conclusion that it was necessary to ‘exterminate Jews, so that neither men nor women, nor even the seed of this people remain'.
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The seeping poison of the ‘snake' of Jewish influence had been the downfall of the old regime. With the Jews eliminated, the Russian Empire could be redeemed, and a new imperial utopia emerge.

As a result, Jews passing through Dauria were in great danger. One man recalled decades later how his father, who ran a medical train along the route for over two years, had given the Jewish doctors on his staff ‘small crosses to wear on little chains around their necks, so that they could pass superficial checks by the Baron's men'. When Ungern's
men went out checking for partisans, any Jew they found was liable to be murdered. A Red Cross official who visited Dauria heard a story that Ungern saw a particularly pretty Jewish girl in a village and offered a thousand roubles to whichever of his men brought him her head. The tale seems unlikely, but only because it has a sexual-sadistic element that is uncharacteristic of Ungern; it would be far more in character simply to have hung or shot the girl out of hand.

Ungern had other hobbies beside planning genocide, however. An ‘interesting conversationalist',
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he would often sit and discuss philosophy, world affairs, and religion with visitors from Chita. Semenov remembered his ‘ability to delve with feeling into philosophical deliberation on questions of religion, literature, and military science'.
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Mongolia, and Mongolian affairs, remained on his mind. He spent most of his time with his Mongol troops, and often dressed in Mongolian style. One foreign correspondent visiting Dauria found him wearing

Ungern showed ‘great knowledge in the field of Mongolian customs and religion'.

He dwelt on superstition and magic, too, with particular reference to Mongolia. Another interviewer found him bent over a table, playing with a pack of cards, and was forced into a truly awkward conversation:

 

This was the first sign of an interest in fortune-telling, but not the last. There were stories that he consulted with Buriat soothsayers even in Siberia. He described himself as ‘a fatalist' and someone who ‘strongly trusts in destiny'.
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Later, in a psychological report, the Soviets would characterise Ungern as being obsessed with military authority, and with the receiving and carrying out of orders. This was only half true. Military authority, for Ungern, was always secondary to the authority of fate. His wilfulness, his growing conviction of his own destiny, would not admit a lesser master. He looked for confirmation in stars, oracle bones and tea leaves. His obsession with prophecy and fate would only grow; the fate of thousands would depend upon it.

These beliefs may have been fuelled by a new habit. At some point he had given up drinking entirely. Indeed, he began to disapprove of his men doing so, warning early in 1919 that drunken soldiers ‘would in future be charged with all the severity of wartime law'.
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Perhaps the shock of the revolution had made him determined to remain clear-headed. If so, he appears to have failed, for, according to several accounts, he merely replaced one dependency with another: opium. (He refers at one point to an ‘opium-smoking party' in his letters.) He could easily have become addicted during his diplomatic trips into Manchuria, where opium-smoking was common among the officials and nobles with whom he was dealing. There would have been no difficulty ensuring a regular supply with so many Chinese in the region.
His officers believed that he saw visions in the opium haze, visions which reinforced the prophecies he read.

Apart from his opium habit, Ungern lived simply, exhibiting a lack of ostentation and a complete disregard for material possessions. His rigorous honesty, especially with regard to his own division's finances, made him almost unique among the Semenovites. He even devoted his personal salary, and the sale of some property he owned in China, presumably brought on earlier trips to Peking, to the division. Ungern's ascetic lifestyle stood in stark contrast to Semenov's life in Chita. The
ataman
was indulging in a whirlpool of pleasures, from theatre to champagne dinners to extravagant balls. Chita's nightlife was notorious: cocaine-addicted Russian whores, officers pimping their wives, exotic oriental hostesses imported across the Manchurian border. Semenov's own appetite for women was insatiable, and he had at least a dozen known mistresses. He maintained a private railway carriage entirely devoted to his harem, known as ‘the Summer Car', which contained ‘thirty of the most beautiful women I ever saw',
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according to one American visitor, as well as an orchestra made up of Austrian-Hungarian prisoners and a copious stock of champagne. He was siphoning off money from both foreign aid and general plunder, and reportedly depositing it in foreign accounts. Literally trainloads of gold were sent by him to China, for eventual deposit in Japanese banks. Despite his public statements that the Bolsheviks would never take Siberia, an aeroplane was always kept handy in case he needed to flee with his loot.