raharris1973
Well-known member
This is a re-run of an old DBWI thread from soc.history.what-if by the late Raymond Speer.
What would it have taken for the United States to elude our prolonged
and painful War in Siberia? That war ruined the presidency of Joe
Kennedy, 1961 to 1969, and blighted the single term of successor Barry
Goldwater. To this day, as tribute to the fallen of that failed war,
bright aluminum crosses laid along the sides of our interstate highways
commeorate the sixty thousand dead from that conflict.
Do we go as far back as the World War, when naval minister Winston
Churchill directed a surprise assault on the Turks by British ships and
Australian and New Zealand infantry? The Constantinople Campaign
effectively knocked Turkey out of the war. Unfortunately for Britain,
its Great Ally in the East, Tsarist Russia, was too inefficient a
government to bring rations and munitions timely and plentifully to the
front lines, no matter what Britain shipped to the Crimea.
Upon his credentials for success at Constantinople, Churchill was HH
Asquith's successor when that Prime Minister retired.
Using the open water lanes to Gibralter, through the Med, through the
Bosphorus and onshore at the Crimea and the Ukraine, Churchill backed
the Russian Military in the Civil War that followed Russia's surrender
to the Germans following the abdication and exile of the Tzar,
Nicholas/1,
In later years, there would be criticism that Prime Minister Churchill
lost perspective and withdrew too many soldiers from the West Front to
reinforce his operations in Russia Churchill was betrayed by the Sidney
Reilly regime in Moscow, which had used British aid in destroying the
radical socialist opposition /2, but had then sought a separate peace
with Germany.
It was Churchill's post war intrigue which split Russia into two --- the
Russian Empire west of the Urals and the Republic of Siberia. The
Kolchak regime collapsed in Siberia, fifty years later, brought down by
internal dissent and external pressure from Japan.
We inherited the mess in Siberia when we defeated the Japanese in the
Pacific War of 1938 to 1943. The United States kept the Alaskas and
Hawaii, and confiscated Japanese holdings on the mainland of Asia,
including Manchuria and Siberia.
And it was to Siberia that my generation was sent yet later. Although
the USA occupation was far less oppressive than the Japanese version,
the Siberians knew they were not free and had dreams of full
independence from the United States.
President Joe Kennedy, Jr., was fascinated by toughness --- winning
against the facts by sheer concentration and the recreational use of
certain drugs. Kennedy, adverse to any compromise by which the
Siberians could let us evacuate their country, clung to war regardless
of the losses in American lives and wealth. As I mentioned before , the
Siberian War was a net loss on our part and worse, it was stupid,
Notes of Explanation
/1. President Charles Evans Hughes offered the ex-Tsar sanctuary in
the USA. The Romanov family still resides in Virginia, USA eighty seven
years since the Romanovs went into exile.
/2 Freemasons in the United States adopted Russian fur hats and called
themselves Communist Soviets in civic lodges that sprang up throughout
America in the 1920s. As for the real Communists who actually served on
any worker' council (Soviet, in the Russian), they were not admitted
into the country. Vladmir Ulyanov (codename Lenin) was too ill to be
sent back to Europe. A victim of a stroke, Lenin would die in an
infirmary at Ellis Island, New York City.
"Better run thru the Tundra."
Plus all the war movies Kubrick, Stone, Coppola, et. al., shot in
Alaska and the Yukon back in the 80s.
Indeed, I was very impressed by the armoured train journey through Siberia
in "Apocalypse Now" - even if it was shot mostly in Canada in winter.
You know the alcoholism spike of the sixties was, in large part, due to
the proliferation of illegal stills in Siberia, and US troops on the
"tag" /1 having long days of tedium. And the heavy handed criminal
punishments dished out by the military in lieu of therapies did not help
a damn either.
There is a shelf of books from biographers like Dallek and diplomatic
historians like Vidal on Joe Kennedy and his administration of the
Siberian War. I've read most of them and I am still unsure of what Joe
meant to do at any particular time. He was super reluctant to be the
first US President to lose a war, but to many people he expressed a
willingness to get out even if the panslavs did not agree to an accord
with the generals in Port Arthur.
Frankly, he dithered while US casulaties passed 150 daily. All his
firebombings and tack nukes and security camps do not disguise the fact
that Kennedy ultimately had no exit strategy for Siberia other than
waiting for Solzhenitsyn to surrender. And no one seriously expected the
"mad monk" to do that.
As I wrote, it goes back to Churchill and the Constantinople Campaign.
History proved that Czar Nicholas was not up to saving monarchial rule
in a united Russia. Churchill set up Sidney Reilly as overlord of
Eurorus, and was surprised when that opportunist switched sides to the
Germans. And then Reilly lost Siberia to Kolchak's men, who were beaten
by Japan, who was in turn brought down by the United States. So the
whole situation could have been avoided but for Churchill's meddling in
Russian history.
Soviet Communism is now the public and comical face of freemasons in
the USA, but it was once a fairly popular movement, sort of like a
European Wobbly party.
Back when B. Traven and his Zapotistas ruled South Mexico, IIRC one of
the few visitors to that hermit kingdom was Koba, an Asiatic Georgian
who had quarreled with his first foreign host, Premier Mussolini of
Italy's Conservative Socialist Progressives, and later fled to that
weird little country. I read Koba's Memoirs --- and Jack Reed's _The
Revolution That Wasn't_ --- and concluded that maybe there might have
been something to that outfit, if they had been more ruthless towards
their opposition. (For an old but interesting book on the subject, read
Julius Rosenburg, _The Reds in Russia: 1905=1925_, first published in
1955.)
/1. "Tag" is short for "taiga."