Roman von Ungern-Sternberg
Based on Wikipedia: Roman von Ungern-Sternberg
The Mad Baron Who Tried to Resurrect Genghis Khan's Empire
In February 1921, a wild-eyed Baltic German aristocrat rode into Mongolia at the head of a ragtag cavalry division and did something almost nobody thought possible: he conquered a country.
Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg—known to history as "the Mad Baron" or "the Bloody Baron"—expelled the Chinese occupiers from Outer Mongolia, restored the exiled Bogd Khan to his throne, and briefly established himself as the most powerful warlord in Central Asia. He believed he was destined to revive the Mongol Empire. Some of his followers thought he was a god. His enemies considered him a psychopath. He was probably all three.
His reign lasted exactly five months. Then the Bolsheviks caught him, gave him a six-hour show trial, and shot him.
But in those five months, Ungern-Sternberg managed to become one of the strangest and most terrifying figures of the twentieth century—a man who seemed to have stepped out of the medieval past into the chaos of the Russian Civil War, carrying with him dreams of mounted warriors sweeping across the steppes to overthrow the modern world.
A Childhood of Cruelty
Ungern-Sternberg was born in 1886 in Graz, Austria, to a noble Baltic German family whose roots in what is now Estonia stretched back to the Middle Ages. The Ungern-Sternbergs were the kind of family that measured prestige in centuries and corpses: when later asked whether his family had "distinguished itself in Russian service," the baron proudly answered, "Seventy-two killed in wartime!"
The young Roman was multilingual from childhood, eventually becoming fluent in German, French, Russian, English, and Estonian. He was also, by all accounts, a monster from an early age.
Classmates and neighbors remembered him as such a ferocious bully that even other bullies feared him. Several parents forbade their children from playing with him. He tortured animals for sport. At age twelve, he tried to strangle his cousin's pet owl to death.
His schools couldn't handle him either. Records from the Nicholas I Gymnasium in Reval show an unruly, bad-tempered young man constantly in trouble: fighting with other cadets, smoking in bed, growing his hair long in defiance of regulations, leaving without permission. In 1905, the schoolmaster wrote to his parents asking them to withdraw him or he would be expelled. They chose withdrawal.
The teenager immediately shipped himself off to fight in the Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria. He was fifteen years old.
Revolution and Rage
That same year, 1905, something happened that would shape Ungern-Sternberg's entire worldview. Estonian peasants, long oppressed by the Baltic German nobility who owned most of the land, rose up in a bloody jacquerie. They lynched aristocrats and burned down their estates.
Among the properties destroyed was the Hoyningen-Huene estate at Jerwakant—the place where Ungern-Sternberg had grown up, deep in the Estonian forests about sixty-five kilometers from Tallinn.
The trauma cemented his hatred of the lower classes. He later wrote that his family had "never taken orders from the working classes" over the centuries, and it was outrageous that "dirty workers who've never had any servants of their own, but still think they can command" should have any say in ruling the Russian Empire.
This was not abstract ideology for Ungern-Sternberg. This was personal. The Estonian peasants who had worked his family's lands were, in his mind, "rough, untutored, wild and constantly angry, hating everybody and everything without understanding why."
His solution to this problem would eventually involve a lot of executions.
Buddhism, the Occult, and Claims of Mongol Ancestry
What made Ungern-Sternberg different from other reactionary aristocrats was his obsession with the East.
During his time at military school in St. Petersburg, he became fascinated with Buddhism and the occult. His cousin, Count Hermann von Keyserling, later wrote that the baron had been intensely curious about "Tibetan and Hindu philosophy" from his teenage years onward and often spoke of the mystical powers possessed by "geometrical symbols." Keyserling called him "one of the most metaphysically and occultly gifted men I have ever met" and believed the baron could read minds.
Ungern-Sternberg claimed descent from Batu Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson—a claim that historians have never verified but that he himself clearly believed. This supposed Mongol ancestry played a central role in his dream of reviving the empire of the Great Khans.
After graduating from military school, he specifically requested to be stationed with a Cossack regiment in Asia, to learn more about Asian culture. His request was granted. Serving in eastern Siberia with the 1st Argunsky and then the 1st Amursky Cossack regiments, he became enthralled with the lifestyle of nomadic peoples—Mongols, Buryats, and others.
In 1913, he transferred to the reserves and moved to Outer Mongolia to assist the Mongols in their struggle for independence from China. Russian officials prevented him from actually fighting alongside Mongolian troops, so he served instead as an out-of-staff officer in the Cossack guard detachment at the Russian consulate in Khovd, in western Mongolia.
Later, in Mongolia, he would formally convert to Buddhism—while also remaining Lutheran, in what must have been one of history's more unusual religious combinations. Many Mongols came to view him as the incarnation of Jamsaran, the God of War in Tibetan and Mongol folklore, or as a reincarnation of Gesar, another war deity. Some believed he was Genghis Khan himself returned to the world.
Ungern-Sternberg did nothing to discourage these beliefs.
World War and a Sword to the Face
When World War One broke out in 1914, Ungern-Sternberg joined the fighting on the Eastern Front. He proved to be an extremely brave officer—and also a somewhat reckless and mentally unstable one.
He showed no fear of death. He seemed happiest leading cavalry charges and being in the thick of combat. General Pyotr Wrangel, the famous White Russian commander, mentioned Ungern-Sternberg's determination in his memoirs. The baron received multiple decorations: the Order of St. George (4th grade), St. Vladimir (4th grade), St. Anna (3rd and 4th grades), and St. Stanislas (3rd grade).
But there was another side to his military record.
He was notorious for heavy drinking and exceptionally cantankerous moods. During one brawl with a fellow officer, he received a sword slash to the face that left him permanently scarred. Rumors spread that brain damage from the wound had affected his sanity. A special study later concluded he was sane, though the injury had increased his irritability.
In October 1916, he was court-martialed and sentenced to two months in prison for attacking another officer and a hall porter during a drunken rage. He was discharged from his command position.
After his release in January 1917, he was transferred to the Caucasus, where Russia was fighting the Ottoman Empire. It was there that he first met the man who would become his partner in warlordism: a Cossack captain named Grigory Semyonov.
The Fall of the Romanovs
The February Revolution of 1917, which ended the three-hundred-year rule of the Romanov dynasty, struck Ungern-Sternberg like a physical blow.
He was an ultraconservative monarchist who believed that monarchs were accountable only to God, and that monarchy was the political system God had chosen for Russia. The opinions of the Russian people were, in his view, completely irrelevant. The very idea that workers and peasants might have a say in governing the empire filled him with disgust.
In the Caucasus, he and Semyonov hatched an unusual scheme. The Assyrian genocide under the Ottoman Empire had driven thousands of Assyrian Christians to flee to Russian lines. Ungern-Sternberg and Semyonov organized these refugees into volunteer military units, hoping their example might inspire the increasingly demoralized Russian army.
The Assyrians scored some minor victories over the Turks, but their contribution to the war effort remained limited. The scheme did, however, give Semyonov an idea: why not raise similar units among the Buryat Mongols of Siberia?
The Kerensky government—the moderate socialists who had taken power after the February Revolution—approved the plan. Ungern-Sternberg headed east to join his friend in raising a Buryat regiment.
Then came the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks seized power. And everything changed.
Warlords in Manchuria
Ungern-Sternberg and Semyonov declared their allegiance to the fallen Romanov dynasty and made themselves part of the White Army, the loose coalition of anti-Bolshevik forces that would fight the Red Army across Russia for the next several years.
Their early operation was almost comically audacious. Late in 1917, Ungern-Sternberg, Semyonov, and just five Cossacks peacefully disarmed a group of about 1,500 Reds at a railway station in Manchuria, near the Russian border on the Far Eastern Railway. They maintained the station as a stronghold while raising a larger force, the Special Manchurian Regiment.
After White forces defeated the Reds on a section of the railway line inside Russia, Semyonov appointed Ungern-Sternberg commandant of troops stationed at Dauria—a strategic railway station east-southeast of Lake Baikal.
But Semyonov and Ungern-Sternberg were not typical White leaders. The main White commanders, like Admiral Alexander Kolchak and General Anton Denikin, believed in a "Russia strong and indivisible." They planned to defeat the Bolsheviks and then reconvene the Constituent Assembly—Russia's short-lived democratic parliament, which the Bolsheviks had disbanded in January 1918—to decide the country's future, including whether to restore the monarchy.
Semyonov refused to recognize Kolchak's authority. Instead, he acted independently, supported by Japanese money and weapons. To Kolchak and Denikin, this was high treason.
Ungern-Sternberg, nominally subordinate to Semyonov, also often acted on his own. And unlike Kolchak, who was willing to let a democratic assembly decide Russia's fate, Ungern-Sternberg believed the monarchy should simply be restored to its pre-1905 form, no questions asked, no votes counted.
The Torture Centre at Dauria
At Dauria, Ungern-Sternberg created something new: the volunteer Asiatic Cavalry Division, abbreviated ACD. It would become his instrument for conquering Mongolia.
He enrolled Buryats and Mongols alongside Russians and Cossacks, creating a multinational force of mounted warriors. The division became a fortress from which he launched attacks on Red forces.
It also became something else. Under Ungern-Sternberg's rule, Dauria became a well-known "torture centre"—a place filled with the bones of dozens of the baron's victims, executed as Reds or thieves.
His chief executioner was a Colonel Laurentz. Later, in Mongolia, Ungern-Sternberg would have Laurentz himself executed for losing his trust—the circumstances remain unclear.
Like many White units operating in the chaos of the civil war, Ungern-Sternberg's troops supported themselves through "requisitions"—confiscating freight from trains passing through Dauria on their way to Manchuria. These confiscations didn't significantly affect Kolchak's main forces, but Russian and Chinese merchants lost considerable property.
During this period, Ungern-Sternberg and Semyonov grew personally distant, though neither admitted it publicly. Ungern-Sternberg's interest in Buddhism had led him to adopt an increasingly ascetic personal lifestyle. He was disgusted by his mentor's corruption and debauchery.
In particular, the virulently antisemitic Ungern-Sternberg was outraged by Semyonov's public affair with a Jewish cabaret singer. His response was characteristically strange: he named one of his horses after her.
Semyonov, for his part, showed little interest in making sure his subordinates followed orders. Combined with Ungern-Sternberg's tendency to act independently, this greatly impaired their military effectiveness as a team.
China Moves into Mongolia
In 1919, while Russia tore itself apart in civil war, the Chinese government saw an opportunity.
The Anhui military clique, then controlling Beijing, sent troops under General Xu Shuzheng to occupy Outer Mongolia. This violated a 1915 tripartite agreement between Russia, Mongolia, and China that had secured Mongolian autonomy and prohibited Chinese troops beyond minimal consular guards.
But with Russia in chaos, who would enforce the agreement?
The occupation proved disastrous. When the Anhui party fell from power in China, the Chinese soldiers in Mongolia found themselves effectively abandoned by their own government. They rebelled against their commanders, plundering and killing Mongols and foreigners alike.
Some of the Chinese occupation troops were actually Chahar Mongols from Inner Mongolia—which created intense animosity between them and the Outer Mongolians they were supposed to be controlling.
Mongolia was ripe for a conqueror.
The Conquest
In February 1921, Ungern-Sternberg struck.
At the head of his Asiatic Cavalry Division, he attacked the Chinese forces occupying Outer Mongolia. Against all odds, he won. The Chinese troops were expelled. The Bogd Khan—the spiritual and secular ruler of Mongolia, who had been under Chinese house arrest—was restored to his throne.
For a brief, surreal moment, Ungern-Sternberg's mad dream seemed to be coming true. He had conquered a country. He had restored a monarch. He controlled a vast territory that could serve as the launching pad for his even more ambitious plans: the revival of the Mongol Empire itself, with cavalry armies sweeping across Asia to overthrow the Bolsheviks and restore the old order.
Five Months of Terror
Ungern-Sternberg's occupation of Outer Mongolia lasted from February to June 1921. In those five months, he imposed order on the capital city—then called Ikh Khüree, now Ulaanbaatar—through fear, intimidation, and brutal violence.
His targets were primarily Bolsheviks and Chinese, but his terror had a way of expanding to include anyone who crossed him or his men. The baron who had tortured animals as a child and tried to strangle his cousin's owl had grown into a man who ran torture centers and executed subordinates who lost his trust.
Yet he also became, for some Mongols, a figure of religious awe. The Baltic German aristocrat who had converted to Buddhism while remaining Lutheran, who claimed descent from Genghis Khan's grandson, who led an army of Cossacks and Mongols and Buryats—he seemed to embody something ancient and terrible, a force from the mythic past.
Whether he was the God of War incarnate or simply a violent madman with delusions of grandeur depends very much on whom you asked.
The Last Ride
In June 1921, Ungern-Sternberg made a fatal decision. He left Mongolia and rode into eastern Siberia to support anti-Bolshevik partisan forces and to head off an invasion by a joint Red Army and Mongolian rebel force.
The Mongolian rebels were revolutionaries inspired by the Bolsheviks, and they had called on Moscow for help. The Red Army was happy to oblige. Ungern-Sternberg's little empire was about to be crushed between the hammer of Soviet military power and the anvil of Mongolian popular resistance to his brutal rule.
The campaign was a disaster. Two months after leaving Mongolia, Ungern-Sternberg was defeated and captured.
The Red Army took him prisoner and transported him to Novonikolayevsk—now Novosibirsk—for trial. A month after his capture, on September 15, 1921, he stood before a revolutionary tribunal charged with counter-revolution.
The trial lasted six hours. The verdict was never in doubt. He was found guilty and executed the same day.
The Mad Baron was thirty-five years old.
The Strange Legacy
What are we to make of Roman von Ungern-Sternberg?
In one sense, he was simply a monster—a man whose cruelty manifested early in childhood and only grew more terrible as he acquired power. The torture center at Dauria, the executions of anyone suspected of Bolshevik sympathies, the reign of terror in Mongolia: these are not the actions of a romantic figure but of a war criminal.
Yet he remains fascinating precisely because of his strangeness. Here was a Baltic German who converted to Buddhism, claimed Mongol ancestry, and tried to resurrect an empire that had been dead for centuries. Here was an aristocrat so dedicated to the old order that he would ride across the steppes at the head of a cavalry army in the age of machine guns and telegraphs, trying to turn back the tide of history by sheer force of will.
He failed, of course. The Bolsheviks won the Russian Civil War. Mongolia became a Soviet satellite state. The monarchies of Europe continued to fall. The cavalry peoples he loved—the Cossacks and Mongols and Buryats—were absorbed into the new socialist order.
But for five months in 1921, a man who believed himself destined for something impossible actually pulled it off. He conquered a country. He restored a king.
Then reality reasserted itself, and the Mad Baron rode to his death.
His story endures not as an example to follow but as a reminder of how far human obsession can go—and how quickly the most improbable dreams can collapse when they collide with the modern world. Ungern-Sternberg wanted to bring back the past. The past, as it turned out, was not interested in returning.